Can you solve barrel mystery at Auchindrain?
Can you help solve something of a mystery at Auchindrain township museum?
Perhaps, on a visit to the fascinating township, you have noticed a barrel sunk into the ground by the byre door at Eddie’s MacCallum’s house.
Though it has been there since at least the 1890s, it remains one of Auchindrain’s many mysteries.
There are examples elsewhere of barrels sunk into the ground outside old barns, but their purpose seems to have been lost in the mists of time.
When Auchindrain became a museum in the 1960s, its founder Marion Campbell described its purpose as ‘to catch liquid manure, used as a mordant, as well as for fertiliser’, but recent research shows that these uses needed slightly different things.
A mordant helps bind and set a dye on to a fabric, and while cow dung has historically been successfully used, animal and human urine was favoured as urea is richer in ammonia. Experts now believe that it would have been difficult to ensure than only urine reached Eddie’s barrel, resulting in a sloppy liquid manure mixture.
It is known from the census data that between 1851 and 1871 one of the people of the township was the weaver Duncan McNicol. Duncan McKellar, recorded as living here in 1851 and 1861, was a tailor.
It is plausible that some of the tenants worked with textiles and asked their fellow tenants to help dye and spin wool or at least collect the mordant for them.
If Eddie’s barrel was used for collecting mordant, it would have been several generations ago. ‘Young’ Eddie MacCallum has no memories of textile production within his family and when his dad was farming.
The barrel was connected by a drain to the manuring channel of the byre. The contents were used as a fertiliser for their garden. Maybe the liquid collected in the barrel had something to do with this, but can you help with the answer?
Email editor@argyllshireadvertiser.co.uk if you can help solve the mystery.
Thanks to Auchindrain Museum for the article and photograph.