Jill Harden, Project Archaeologist at RSPB Scotland, explores a small abandoned farm at Cottascarth and Rendall with the help of some volunteers.
Dale, Cottascarth – the story of an Orkney farm
Orkney is a fascinating group of islands to explore at any time of year, for their archaeological, historical, and natural heritage. The archaeologist’s visit this time focused on one specific reserve and one particular aspect of it: The small, abandoned farm of Dale at Cottascarth and Rendall. It is here that the RSPB is about to develop a new larger hide for watching and enjoying nature in an apparently simple building that is part of a farmstead that has its own particular story to tell.
The farm buildings at Dale
Lowland Orkney is a rich agricultural landscape that has changed considerably over the last 6,000 years. Neolithic farm settlements, like Skara Brae, survive under the soil. However today’s rectangular or square field patterns and dispersed small farm buildings owe little to past settlement or land divisions. Most were laid out only 150 years or so ago, when agricultural improvements were imposed by estate landowners, small holdings were created, and rents were increased.
The RSPB reserve at Cottascarth and Rendall Moss is no exception. The largest area on the reserve is that at Dale, an abandoned small hill farm that includes the moorland grazing of Mid Tooin. Today it is renowned for the hen harriers that breed here; they probably hunted across the hill ground in previous centuries too, but during the 1870's their landscape was put under pressure by the creation of Dale farm. The rough ground had to be taken in-hand to create 20 acres of arable ground and a house had to be built from local stone. We can only imagine the hard laboring of the first tenant John Pearson, who came in to Dale from the nearby island of Rousay.
Volunteers recording the building that is to become the new hide
The RSPB seemed to have little information about the historic buildings at Dale and so, before one of them is transformed into a new hide, we have been working with volunteers to record the farm and try to find out more about it. This is part of the Enjoy Wild Orkney project that the RSPB is involved with, to enhance public engagement on these magical islands. Nature certainly inhabits these roofless buildings - they house pied wagtails and starlings. The farm is also very evocative of past ways of life of Orkney farmers and crofters.
Initially we thought the buildings had been constructed all at the same time, creating an L-shaped farmstead, but this proved not to be the case. John Pearson must have built a farmhouse and an attached byre first, providing shelter while the land was brought into cultivation. Then, a decade or so later, the other range was constructed, along with additional roofed buildings against the far end of the house. The plans and photographs that have just been produced tell the basic story, and will be entered into the national historic environment record. It is fortunate that Orkney has a well resourced library and archive and by working there we have been able to people Dale’s past to some extent.
It may have been John Pearson or the next tenant John Isbister who bought a powered threshing machine for use on the farm, but to use it water-power had to be harnessed from the nearby burn. A mill pond was created to the west and a lade was dug from it to take water to the waterwheel sited against the building that housed the threshing machine. Although roofless today, parts of the system still survive, including the small cast-iron mill wheel, linked to the cogged wheel that once powered the thresher.
The building which housed the threshing machine and the waterwheel still in situ
One or other of the Johns also built a separate range of farm buildings, including a byre and dairy with its recessed cupboard and sae bink (a curved recess that could accommodate a barrel) for a water tub and dairy products. By the time the farm was abandoned in 1957 there were four roofed buildings in this range, one of which was possibly a pig sty.
None of the tenants stayed at Dale for life. The census, gathered once every decade, notes a change in the family staying there every time. The last tenant to live at Dale was David Hourie, a bachelor, who worked the land from 1937 to 1948. He grew Keppleton Kidney potatoes and made butter to sell in the local shop when milk was plentiful. But it is said that he could only afford to buy yesterday’s bread. It was a very hard life.
Recording one of the buildings at Dale
The day’s work to record the buildings at Dale was a great success – this is one sort of local volunteers project that we hope to develop on Orkney and elsewhere. It may seem a departure from monitoring birds and developing habitats, but the historic environment is important, and peopling the past provides fascinating background to our reserves. It is also best management practice to record what we have now before changes completely alter places.