WITH just a few words, teacher and lay preacher Dougald Munro marked the end of one of Scotland's most remote communities.
His final entry in the log recording attendance and activities at the school on St Kilda was written just two months before the final 36 residents were evacuated in 1930.
Writing on June 27, 1930, Mr Munro recorded attendance had been perfect for the previous week and the eight pupils on the island had been given a treat. He then penned his final words: “Today very probably ends the school in St Kilda as all the inhabitants intend to leave the island this summer. I have to be away very soon.”
More than 80 years later, his school log, as well as that of another abandoned island, Mingulay, have gone online, revealing glimpses of community life on these remote human outposts of Scotland.
They underline how education had to be worked round the demands of island life, from cutting peats to making hay, from preparing tweeds to harvesting fulmars on St Kilda’s towering cliffs.
Mr Munro’s valedictory entry in the St Kilda school log book followed a similar situation 20 years earlier when the nine pupils left the school on Mingulay for the final time.
That community at the southern end of the Outer Isles archipelago had been struggling to survive on an island with no natural harbour. On March 18, 1910, the school log records: “Received information from Clerk of the intentions of the board to discontinue this school after April 30 1910.” Two years later the last islanders left.
The unique books have been digitised in Edinburgh before being returned to Stornoway as part of a partnership between Tasglann nan Eilean Siar (Hebridean Archives) and the National Records of Scotland.
David Powell, project manager and archivist with Hebridean Archives, said: “The window into the past of these rural remote communities is fascinating and, as we were all school pupils at some point, is something we can all connect with in some way.”
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