The ancient shielings inspiring a 21st century slowdown

Alison Campsie reports on a new project which aims to get screen-obsessed kids to reconnect with the ancient rhythms of life

THEY were simple huts lived in during the warmer months by families taking their cattle away up into the hills for summer grazing.

The shielings were mainly lived in by women and children who usually left for the hills on Beltane, May 1, the first day of summer. Some would stay until Lammas Day on August 1, the start of harvest season.

Time at the shieling would allow cattle to feed on rich summer pastures while keeping the animals away from crops growing down in the straths.

The spell away was regarded as a particularly special time year with a rich tradition of song, poetry and stories forming around the time in the hills.

Now, the Shieling Project at Struy near Beauly, is working to get young people appreciating this old way of life and how its principles can be applied to good living in the 21st century.

Dr Sam Harrison, founder of the social enterprise, said the ways of the shieling helped young people get back to basics and offer an alternative to screen time and consumerism. Peat cutting, looking after animals and cultivation of food are among activities offered at the project.

Dr Harrison said: “You can go from looking back to looking forward. The shielings are about outdoor life and it is about being resilient, tough and strong.

“It is about making buildings from local materials, growing and cooking your own food and entertaining yourself. The shieling holds lots of different issues together. The shieling tells us how to treat our landscapes, how to build things, how to build culture and identity and how language fits with the landscape.”

The use of shielings is thought to have dated from the end of the Iron Age with the Vikings adding their own versions of huts to the landscape.

Thomas Pennant in Voyage to the Hebrides, published in 1776, gave the first written account of the shelters.

He wrote :“I landed on a bank covered with sheelins, the tempo - rar y habitations of some peasants who tend the herds of milch cows.

“These formed a grotesque group; some were oblong, some conic, and so low that the entrance is forbidden without creeping through the opening, which has no other door than a faggot of birch twigs placed there.”

He described a bed made of heath and placed on a bank of sod, some dairy vessels and baskets containing pieces of cheese, the ‘product of the summer’.

The diet at the shieling consisted largely of dairy, with cheese, curd and butter made from cow’s milk.

A ‘lucky cheese’ for children was also made on the last day to bring good fortune over the coming months.

Dr Harrison said shielings were largely phased out during the 1700s and 1800s when drovers sought out cattle to buy. Demand for salt beef during the Napoleonic Wars helped bring subsistence living to an end with the exchange of money coming into play.

However, it is known the shielings were still occupied in summer months on the Isle of Lewis until the 1950s.

Dr Harrison said: “Basically everyone packed up their stuff, including all their cows and animals, and headed to the shieling.

“It was hard work but also, people loved being up there. They loved the freedom of it.”

Dr Harrison said the ecological footprint of the shieling should be 0 An 18th century conical shieling, top, and a reconstructed version, inspiring young people to go back to basics. Pics: Creative Commons/high Life Highland/sam Harrison valued as much as their social and cultural impact.

He added: “The shieling was an effective ecological model for 800 years or more. It was a pretty good system for the hills.

“Cows are eating everything and their manure helps the soil. The hills go through two to three months of intensive grazing and are then left for nine months. The hills were farmland more ecologically diverse than they are now with wildflowers, grass es and herbs. The story of the shieling is not just about people but of the landscape too.”