Hirta
| Hirta Gaelic: Hiort | |
| Main village: | The Village |
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| Location | |
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| Location: | 57°48’-0"N, 8°37’48"W |
| Grid reference: | NF092998 |
| Area: | 1,656 acres |
| Highest point: | Conachair, 1,410 feet |
| Data | |
| Population: | abandoned in 1930 |
Hirta is the largest island in the far St Kilda archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the only one to have been permanently inhabited in historic times. The name "Hiort" (in Gaelic) and "Hirta" (in English) have also been applied to the whole archipelago.
Geography
The island measures 2 miles from east to west and 2 miles from north to south. It has an area of 2.6 square miles and about 9 miles of coastline. The only real landing place is in the shelter of Village Bay on the south-east side of the island, which consequently was the site of the island's village where all the inhabitants dwelt in times past.
The island is cliff-bound and forbidding. It has a plain on the sea at Village Bay and also slopes gently down to the sea at Glen Bay, at the western end of the north coast, but even here the rocks go straight into the sea at a shallow angle and landing here is not easy if any swell is on the sea. Apart from these two places, the cliffs rise sheer out of deep water. Sea kayakers have been know to achieve a landing for a break on a small boulder beach backed by cliffs in the north of the island, just before the north-east side where the highest summit in the island, Conachair, forms a precipice 1,410 fee high.
St Kilda is probably the core of a Tertiary volcano, but, besides volcanic rocks, it contains hills of sandstone in which the stratification is distinct.
The wee island of Dùn is separated from Hirta by a shallow strait about 55 yards wide. This is normally impassable but is reputed to dry out on rare occasions.
Population
- Main article: St Kilda
Although the islands had been continuously populated since prehistoric times, the whole population was evacuated in 1930, due to decline to an unsustainable population, to disease, poverty and outside influences.
Viking burials have been found on Hirta, and though one may not see at first in the island nor its former culture any echo of the influence of the Norwegian seamen and settlers, some of the other islands of the group bear names derived from Old Norse and the spring serving the village is named from that language: Tobar Childa.
St Kilda was part of the Lordship of the Isles, then became a property of the MacLeods of Dunvegan from 1498 until 1930. There were in the Middle Ages three chapels on St Kilda, dedicated to St Brendan, St Columba, and Christ Church, but little remains. There are also the remains of a beehive house, known as the 'Amazon's House'.
The islanders had a tough life, and survived by exploiting the thousands of sea birds which live on the islands. There are a large number of 'cleits', huts used for storing dried sea birds, fish, hay and turf. The islanders had a very democratic system, and decisions were taken by an island council, made up of all the menfolk. The present village was set out in the 1830s above village bay, but in the 1880s some of the population left for Australia, and the remaining inhabitants were finally evacuated in the 1930s because of hardship and storms which had cut off the islands for weeks.
The island was bequeathed to The National Trust for Scotland in 1957 and was designated as Scotland's first World Heritage Site in 1987. It is possible to visit the island. The Ministry of Defence established a base on Hirta for tracking missiles fired from the station on South Uist. [1]
Surrounding stacks
Hirta is surrounded by a number of small sea stacks. Bradastac, Mina Stac and Sgeir Domhnuill lie under the cliffs of Conachair to the east and Sgeir nan Sgarbh further south under the heights of Osieval. An Torc is west of Ruabhal and Sgeir Mhòr is further north under Mullach Bi.
There are also various large stacks in the narrow strait between Hirta and Soay - Stac Dona, Stac Soay and Stac Biorach.
Outside links
(See under St Kilda
References
- Fisk, Stephen. "Abandoned Communities ..... St Kilda". Abandoned Communities. http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/page39.html. Retrieved 2009-07-16.