The Scottish shieling, or shiel, was a small farm hut and pasture located on the upper slopes of Scottish hills and uplands that formed a complex network of transhumance and pastoralism in Scotland for many centuries. The shieling was a place where families as well as livestock would relocate for the warmer summer months, before returning with the colder weather in time for harvest. This system produced a unique culture that revolved around the social interactions between farmers in these isolated shielings, the tough agricultural work necessary, and nature itself. 

Shielings were usually built on the edges of Scottish lairds’ vast wilderness estates, often on the upper courses of burns that later passed through the farmstead down in the valley, or on ridges that marked boundaries.. The sites were chosen with great care to be sheltered and with good drainage, both to protect from thieves and for the health of livestock. These pastures were usually located more than five miles away from farmsteads, some being more than 20 miles away, over the extremely punishing terrain. This discouraged farmers and estate managers from developing these pastures into proper farmsteads and meant that shieling farmers were very isolated from their wintering homes. Shielings were located on the edge of habitable civilisation in Scotland. 

A shieling farmer’s main animal was Black Angus Cattle, a hardy cow known for its lean beef. The herd was split into two categories, the yeld and the milch. The milch were milked to produce the cheese and butter which made up a large part of rent payments. They also formed the breeding stock of the herd. The yeld cattle were given to landlords for meat and were usually the old or barren cows. Sheep were mostly used for their wool and farmers usually kept only a few. Some farmers kept goats for the meat and skins, but they could not be kept near crops or forests, as they could wreak havoc on those precious natural resources. Geese and poultry were also kept, mostly to pay for rent in the form of eggs. 

In the middle of spring, usually April, crops would be planted in the township, below the large communally owned “head dyke”, which separated the fertile infield land from the general wilderness. At this time the younger men of the village would lead the yeld (non-dairy) cattle from the township to the shielings in order to prepare the pastures and do the necessary repairs to the shieling buildings. The structures were usually battered by the windswept highland winters, and often collapsed from the weight of snow on their roofs. They were light buildings, designed to be rebuilt again and again from the materials around them. This first migration to the shielings was known as the “wee flitting”. In early June came the “muckle flitting”. This was a much grander affair, with livestock and people being paraded through the clachan and along the head dyke, before taking the long and arduous trail into the uplands to the distant shieling, a process which could take several days. This was a time of celebration, marking the start of summer. 

The construction of shiel buildings was modest, to say the least. Usually collected in groups of two-three buildings, plus ancillary huts, an entire farming village, or clachan, would be spread across several of these pastures in an irregular way, based solely on where it was possible to build the shiels. This settlement was known as Baile Samraidh in gaelic. 

The huts were almost always single room buildings, with a small hearth inset into the wall. Shiels were most commonly rectangular in shape, but older structures in the far north and on some islands could be conical in shape, not unlike a tipi. The floor was usually sunken to provide space to stand, as from the exterior the structure was generally lower than 5 feet tall. They rarely had more than one small window (which was usually covered or blocked to prevent draughts), and the door would often be so low as to require one to get on their hands and knees to enter. The buildings were never wider than 6 feet, barely able to accommodate the raised beds of heather and turf which the family slept on. Some shielings were documented as being 18ft long, whereas the shortest were said to be around 6ft. What little storage space there was was inset into the wall, and usually taken up the cheese which they used to pay taxes and rent to their laird. On the exterior, a lean-to was positioned to store peat for fuel, and cheese-making equipment. There was a complete lack of ornamentation and material goods: usually, a crucifix or bible page was the only decoration. The farming families lived utterly devoid of luxury and relied heavily on the oral tradition and company of others for entertainment. 

The shiels were built mostly with turf and wood, but construction techniques varied wildly. Some farmers that lived nearer supplies of timber could build solely with wood or cover wooden walls with a layer of turf to insulate the structure. Shiels with less wood available would be forced to use it sparingly, often only on the roof, with walls made of mounded turf. This led many observers to see shielings as little more than holes in the ground. Shieling roofs were usually clad with a rough heather thatch or divot. Floors were almost always naturally compacted earth, occasionally with a line of stones embedded to demarcate sleeping areas. These thatches were often havens for plant life, with nutrients from the peat fire slowly percolating through and feeding many species of mosses and grasses. When these nutrient -heavy roofs were no longer fit for purpose, farmers would transport them down to the village and use them as fertiliser on their fields. Shielings were not only environmentally friendly but also aided and improved the land around them in a cyclical manner. The building of shielings was completely unregulated, and surveys of shieling properties were non-existent, so all of this is anecdotal, based on the visits by estate managers, early anthropologists, and stories passed down through farming families. As such, there was almost certainly a much greater variety in construction, sizes and materials than we can know. However, every shieling building shared similarities in their extremely modest size, cramped interior, use of extremely local materials, and lack of ornamentation. All these combined to encourage and necessitate shieling’s inhabitants to spend as much time as they could outside. 

Shieling life was hard in many ways, with long days of farming, butter churning, peat cutting, and more. The shiels themselves were by no means nice places to live, draughty, cramped and smoky from the peat fire. The Scottish summer was as rainy and windy then as it is now, if not worse on those high, remote hills. Farmers were at the beck and call of cruel lairds and landlords, who could evict them or pressgang them into unpaid labour at a moment’s notice. They didn’t even have any legal rights to have shielings, the land being held in ‘tolerance’, meaning they had verbal permission to be there, but with no legal rights or protections.  

However, Shielings led farmers to create close knit social bonds with each other. Many a cold night, the larger shielings could be found filled to the absolute brim with farmers, all taking part in a traditional ceilidh – a night were the local senachaidh, storyteller, would gather people and regale stories of ancient myth or recent history. Part local news bulletin, part fabulist, he would notify people of births and deaths from other nearby shieling settlements, talk of the larger goings on across the region and Scotland as a whole, before settling down to tell one of the thousands of long, elaborate stories that made up the Scottish Gaelic tradition. These stories could last for up to nine hours, often extending up until dawn. When the senachaidh took a break, others would begin dancing the traditional dances which now make up the majority of modern Ceilidhs. He was held in such high regard that if the storyteller had not finished by dawn, work would not start on time that day, and he would be allowed to finish the tale. 

These strong, traditional bonds of language and culture between farmers are why the shieling was such an important piece of architecture and social culture. It showed both the hardship and resilience of Highland farmers, their cultural richness alongside the poor, exploitative conditions they worked under. The shieling created an important, unique culture and lifestyle amongst Highland farmers, one that may now be lost forever.