Easdale’s future Easdale’s future is far from assured. With 60 residents over its 50 acres, it is Scotland’s most densely permanently populated island. By comparison its neighbour and fellow Slate Island, Shuna, has just a single occupant over its 1000+ acres. Easdale faces a number of challenges, the most pressing of which come from the sense of gravity still exerted by its industrial heyday. In the nineteenth century, the quarries’ pumping equipment was powered by another product of prehistoric geological processes: coal. Ships arrived in the harbour carrying this cargo and left carrying slate - an efficient arrangement that avoided the difficulties of ballasting (elsewhere in Scotland, Dundee developed a marmalade industry using oranges that acted as ballast for otherwise empty ships arriving from Spain). Coal became the de facto fuel for heating the islanders’ housing and remains so to this day. Island life comes to a standstill on Coal Day – a single day in July when the annual shipment of coal is received by the islanders and distributed around the island by wheelbarrow. This precious resource is no longer sourced locally however, with it far more likely to be imported from North America, Columbia or Australasia than Europe, let alone the UK, and comes at ever-greater expense. For Easdale this reliance upon materials from far-flung places is now all encompassing. Its desire to upgrade the built fabric of its harbour and ferry office, means it must come to terms with how it might maintain its sense of identity and genius loci post-slate. Though Easdale is a decidedly singular place, its story of transformation, resilience and interconnection, is relatable. Like many other places, Easdale is the unique result of circumstances and forces far beyond its control. It stands as a poignant reminder of how the interplay between geology, industry, and community shape a sense of place. Travel – be it of materials, ideas or people through both space and time – has been an instrumental force in all this and Easdale could not be the place it is today without it.
Easdale Seil ferry landing point on Ellenabiach
Tim Ingleby
Dragon’s Back Ridge
38 on site review 46 :: travel
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