175 years ago (1850): rack and ruin Industrialisation and urbanisation meant that demand for Easdale Slate had never been greater. Despite the quarries’ proximity to the sea and having previously been worked to sea level or below, mechanisation brought new sources of power, pumps and windmills to the island enabling the seemingly limitless reserves to be extracted in ever greater quantities, even at high tide. The island had changed in other ways too. Almost 500 people, all quarriers or their family members, now lived on the island in single-storey cottages recently constructed from the ubiquitous Easdale Slate. External walls of rubble masonry, harled and whitewashed have slate paving slabs at the street front and neatly slated roofs. Each cottage has two main rooms separated by a lobby and closet, the latter normally entered from the kitchen. The internal partitions are timber-framed with slate infill. Quarrymen were paid per thousand slates, twice yearly, obliging workers to run up bills with the Company store. Tallies of slates quarried and amounts owing at the store were literally recorded in writing on a slate, giving rise to the term ‘put it on the slate’. Life on the island is hard, the climate harsh with little protection from squalls rolling in off the Atlantic. In 1850 Scotland was pummelled by a great storm. While land dislodged in Orkney ultimately resulted in Skara Brae being unearthed, Easdale enjoyed no such silver lining. The quarries, some approaching 100m deep, were rapidly flooded as the sea encroached. Yet demand was such that there remained a will to continue. Miraculous efforts were made to drain and re-establish the most productive slate workings. Thirty-one years later however, in November 1881, history repeats itself. A massive tidal wave swamped the tiny island and the quarries that provide its livelihood are flooded once more. This time there is no reprieve. The well-run Marble and Slate Company of Netherlorn had been dissolved in 1866 and various quarries came under separate ownership. For the first ten years under the new ownership – a consortium of Glasgow-based businessmen – the industry prospered on the fat of earlier investment that was not then sustained. Though equipment was salvaged from the now-submerged Ellenabeich quarries, many of the itinerant population left to seek gainful employment elsewhere and attempts to revive production never got close to previous levels. The last slates to be taken from Easdale on a commercial scale were shipped in 1911 and the island was all but abandoned. Though geographically close to the mainland, Easdale, by all other measures isolated and exposed on the fringe of the Atlantic Ocean, fell into disrepair and ruin.
Island cottages
Tim Ingleby
Abandoned pumphouse
36 on site review 46 :: travel
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