Tag » stiomreway « @ Comunn Eachdraidh Pairc

Oct

20

What do you know about land settlement in ORINSAY, STEIMREWAY or GLEN GRAVIR between the WARS?

Much has been written about the Highlands and Islands clearances which took place mainly from the late eighteenth century through to the mid nineteenth century. By comparison very little research has been published on the creation of new crofts and the enlargement of existing ones during the inter-war years between 1919 and 1939. A considerable number of these so called “land settlement” schemes have been undertaken on the island of Lewis. In South Lochs there were three such land settlement schemes between the two World Wars. Two of them, at Orinsay and Glen Gravir were recognised as official schemes, and the one at Steimreway was not.
Orinsay, along with Lemreway, was cleared in the 1840s, and fourteen new crofts were created there by the Board of Agriculture for Scotland (BoAS) in 1922. These remain today.

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May

24

Calum Nicolson (Calum Beag)

church / communications / fishing / people / trade / transport

AIG AN OBAIR – From an article in Tional April 1994
When I left school in Lemreway in 1934, I got a job as a postman, delivering letters to thirty-two crofts in Lemreway, thirteen crofts in Orinsay and four crofts in Stiomreway. This was a departure from the accepted custom as boys usually took a job in a fishing boat on leaving school. There were plenty of opportunities, as there were nine boats fishing our of Lemreway at the time, all requiring a crew of five adults and a boy. The boats left Lemreway on a Monday and were based in Stornoway until they returned the following Saturday morning.
Delivering the mail to Stiomreway was quite an arduous task. It was over two miles from Orinsay over rough moorland and around lochs. In those days, most of the mail comprised of catalogues and parcels from J. D. Williams and similar mail order firms. The catalogues were often ordered for the girls in the Village by boys under pet names and I became quite expert at spotting the fakes and most of them found a resting place at the bottom of the loch about a mile out of Orinsay. Stiomreway was eventually abandoned in 1941.
This occupation was only available when the regular postman was on holiday or ill. Between times, I found work at one of the road building projects going on at the time and soon felt I was well on the way to becoming a millionaire. With our newly earned wealth, five of us ordered brand new bicycles from – wait for it – J. D. Williams, of course. They cost £5 each and we paid them up at ten shillings per week or 50p in to-day’s currency. They were called ‘Flights’ and we were very proud of them. We collected a few cuts and bruises before we mastered them, but we soon got the hang of them and felt very proud of ourselves riding to Church at Gravir on Sunday, scattering the rest of the congregation as we sped by on the four-mile journey. I suppose we were as popular as the Red Arrows are to-day.

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Mar

29

The Royal Mail came by creel

communications / emigration / people / transport

From an article in Tional – May 1992
The history of the delivery of mail in Pairc is a story of considerable achievement by the handful of men and women whose determination, vigour and sense of purpose enabled their small, remote communities to receive the advances in communications offered by the Post Office in the second half of the last century.
The role of the redoubtable Ishbel Nicolson, Calbost, in pioneering the postal service in Lochs as it opened up new frontiers to reach more and more people stands out as a tribute to her resourcefulness, enterprise and ingenuity at a time when women were not generally expected or encouraged to play a prominent part in the day to day life of their communities.
Mail Deliveries in Pairc

Much more so than nowadays, women were left to tend to the family’s needs, rear children, manage livestock and perform some of the more burdensome and unpleasant tasks associated with the crofting way of life.
Ishbel, or Belle as she was known, was the daughter of Murdo Nicolson (Murchadh Dh’ol Thormoid), of Calbost, and she had gone over the Loch to Crossbost in the late eighteen sixties on her marriage to Kenneth MacKenzie (Coinneach Ledidh), 28 Crossbost, who had recently returned home from service with the Hudson Bay Company in Canada. Over the Loch (null air a loch, or thall air a loch) were commonly used phrases of the day which have now fallen into disuse, signifying the close bond of friendship that existed between the inhabitants of the villages that existed on both sides of Loch Erisort and the harmonious social interchange that prevailed when only a short sea crossing separated them, compared with the long, winding stretch of road that served to isolate the communities from each other from the late nineteen twenties onwards.