Perhaps a new influx of tourists will bring in the money the town needs to preserve its architectural treasures, but it’s hard to imagine this happening. This is a land where mere survival can be difficult enough: 80 per cent of Bangladesh is flood plain and the country is prone to flooding from the annual monsoons and frequent cyclones. Change here is rapid and ruthless, and it may have irreversibly made its home in the streets of Sonargaon.
The only resident in a street that once housed hundreds.
DATE ABANDONED: 29 August 1930
TYPE OF PLACE: Island community
LOCATION: Hebrides, Scotland
REASON: Hardship
INHABITANTS: 36
CURRENT STATUS: UNESCO World Heritage Site/Military base
FOR 2,000 YEARS, A SMALL COMMUNITY LIVED ON AN ISLAND THAT WAS PART OF BRITAIN YET UTTERLY ALIEN TO IT. AS THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CAME KNOCKING, THEIR ANCIENT, MONEYLESS WAY OF LIFE SIMPLY BECAME TOO DIFFICULT COMPARED WITH WHAT WAS AVAILABLE ELSEWHERE.
The steep cliffs of St Kilda are home to the largest colony of gannets in Europe. There are more than 60,000 nests.
The island on the edge of the world
‘And I am come down to deliver them . . . and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey . . .’
The Book of Exodus
The minister finished his reading and left the Bible open on its simple wooden lectern. The people briefly returned to their houses to place small piles of oats in their hearths as tokens of faith, or gratitude. Then they gathered up the last of their belongings and let the minister lead them down to the jetty. There they boarded the ship that would take them away from the only home that they had ever known, and bring two millennia of human habitation on St Kilda to an end.
The westernmost isle
The archipelago of St Kilda is not just wild, it is beyond the horizon. Although part of the United Kingdom, it never appears in any road atlas. Firstly, that’s because it has no roads; but it also lies 64 km (40 miles) out into the Atlantic Ocean off the westernmost point of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. It is by far the most remote part of the British Isles ever to be anyone’s home.
The largest island of the group, and the only one ever to be inhabited, is Hirta, which also has some of the highest sea cliffs in the United Kingdom. There are three other islands: Dun, Soay and Boreray, and several spiky sea stacks rising like giant canines from the heaving swell.
A communal way of life
The islands were first inhabited during the Bronze Age and supported a population of up to 180 for much of that time. The St Kildans originally spoke Gaelic, not English, and were clothed in a similar style to people in the Outer Hebrides.
The islanders lived in various types of dwelling over the years, some of which remain. The crescent of cottages that we see today was built in the 1830s. Originally they were Hebridean black houses with a single room in which the cattle also slept in winter. Each house had its own strip of land for growing crops. New houses, which boasted a second room, were built in the 1860s.
There is only a little arable land, but there is an almost limitless supply of seabirds. The men would meet in a daily parliament to decide which tasks needed to be done and who would do them. Usually, this meant most of the men scaling the dizzy cliffs and collecting the birds by snare, fowling rod or by hand. Puffins, fulmars and gannets were the most commonly eaten birds, and their feathers and oil were also put to good use. Other jobs included mending fishing nets or collecting sheep from the outlying islands in a small boat.
Life was simple. It has been estimated that each person on St Kilda ate 115 fulmars every year. Puffins were a favourite snack. Food was unvarying, but it was nutritious and plentiful; the islanders did not starve. Every haul of eggs, fish and seabirds was divided out equally amongst the villagers. There was no need for money.
For centuries the only contact with the outside world were the occasional visits of whaling and fishing boats, and the annual visit of the rent collector. The islanders rented St Kilda from the Macleods of Dunvegan in Skye – a far-off landlord. As the islanders had no money, the Macleods’ rent collector accepted payment in oats, barley, fish, cattle and sheep products, and seabirds. He would also trade in goods that the islanders couldn’t make, such as tools and homewares. The rent collector was accompanied by a minister who performed any baptisms and weddings that had become necessary in the previous year.
As more frequent communication became established, the church on the mainland began to send ministers out more often. A church and manse were built in the early nineteenth century and a minister moved in full time. A school was added in 1884.
Oppressed by religion
A visitor in 1697, Martin Martin, noted that the people loved to play games and make music. However, the Victorian tourists often commented on how sad the people seemed. As if life here wasn’t tough enough, the minister who came in 1865 seems to have been a ‘fire-and-brimstone’ merchant of the first order, who ruled the people with a cross of iron.
He made attendance compulsory at three Sunday services, each two or three hours long. When a boat bringing vital food to relieve a near-famine arrived one Saturday, the minister told the skipper he must not unload the supplies until Monday: the islanders had to prepare for the Sabbath. The island’s children were banned from playing games, and had to carry a bible with them at all times. So much time was spent in observation of religious matters that practical matters became neglected.
‘The Sabbath was a day of intolerable gloom. At the clink of the bell the whole flock hurry to Church with sorrowful looks and eyes bent upon the ground. It is considered sinful to look to the right or to the left.’
A visitor in 1875
First contact with the wider world
The steam yacht Vulcan visited St Kilda in 1838. This was one of the first meetings between ordinary British people from the mainland and the islanders, but such interactions would soon become common. Victorians were fascinated by what they regarded as a primitive people living at the very edge of Britain, the most civilized nation on earth.
This was a defining time in their history: before then, the outside world must have seemed alien and unattractive to the St Kildans, if not downright terrifying. Now they had a greater understanding of what it could offer; particularly how much more comfort it was possible for people to enjoy.
Some inhabitants decided to make a complete break. In 1852, thirty-six – more than one third of the island’s population at the time – sailed for Australia. The ones who survived the arduous journey settled in Melbourne, where they named the suburb of St Kilda after their home island.
In 1877 regular summer cruises took curious tourists out to see the St Kildans.