Peedie Hooses
Orkney’s landscape during Gow’s visit back home in 1724 was much browner than the Orkney of today, with more moorland and much less lush green grass. In summer the arable land lay in a bewildering strip-patchwork of hundreds of corn-rigs, yellow with charlock and purple with valerian, intermixed with sections of rough grassland on which animals would be tethered.
Peter Hansen’s friends, the Craigie family, lived on a small croft, in a peedie hoose, outside Stromness. Croft and farm houses were grouped into “toons”. A fail dyke (a turf wall), outside of which the animals grazed in the summertime on the common pasture, surrounded the homes and arable land. Orcadians lived in these communities, or toonships, for mutual help and benefit as had been done for thousands of years. The round stone houses of Skarabrae had long since been replaced by the long-house. There, under the long roof, families, just like the Craigies, along with their household pets (which could include dogs, cats, pigs, hens, ducks and geese) lived at one end of the building with the large animals at the other, just through a communicating door. These houses were snug. Usually the cattle lived at the lower end of the building, for obvious reasons. Beyond the animals was the barn and the kiln where oats and barley were dried for storage, grinding and for brewing. No tea, coffee or fruit juice in those days. Even the children drank weak brew. At the other end, in the family home, the beds were stone recesses in the outer walls of the building, the dresser was made from stone, hens settled into little alcoves in the walls and the peat fire burned in the centre of the floor. The clouds of smoke eddied and whirled for some time through the air of the room before they reached the hole in the flagstone roof. Roofs with a covering of heather thatch would be warmer. However, the thatch would hold the water. Thus it could rain for up to one and a half hours longer inside the house than outside. Ships’ timber washed ashore from a shipwreck was a blessing and would be used to hold up these heavy roofing slabs of stone. Conflicting draughts from the door and gaps in the stone walls sent the strong smelling peat smoke through every corner of the dwelling, and it may be that it acted as a disinfectant as well as a deodorizer where man and beast were herded together in such a limited space.
Cutting and drying and gathering in the peat for the fire were important chores during the summer months. Not only did the families have to gather in enough peat for themselves, but they had to provide their share for their laird, or landowner, also. Seaweed would have been gathered to put on the land for, again, both themselves and the landowner’s garden. A portion of their crop, poultry, butter and cheese would all have been part of their rent to the laird.
Pictures by Tom Kent
