The graveyard at Bostadh Bay, with its carpet of buttercups, has to be the most idyllic setting for a burial ground anywhere in the country. I always enjoy visiting such places when on holiday. Stones here usually bear a name and date only. When a wife is buried with her husband she gets her maiden name back. In the Uists we found one burial ground with the majority Roman Catholics at the east end. You can tell them by the R.I.P. on every stone. At the west end were the minority Protestants. But here in Lewis one would expect this ground to be completely Protestant. We also saw graves of unknown merchant seamen, washed ashore in the second World War. They bear the date of burial and "Known unto God". Very sad. But look at this view. Is it not a place to die for?
Walk past the burial ground, down to the beach and you find a reconstruction of an Iron Age house, built in 1998. It is near where evidence of five Pictish jelly baby or figure of eight houses were found after a storm in 1993 uncovered the sand from their foundations. The site was beyond the present house over on the left of the bay. It is thought to date from around 500 A.D. before the Norse invasion.
Inside the house we were shown around by a very well informed local guide seen in the picture. She explained that the reconstruction was authentic in every way except for the roof. No-one knows exactly how these houses were roofed. Inside a fire would have continually burned.
We lunched near this view of the bay. it was Friday and the first day we had managed to picnic outside. A cold North East wind had kept away the rain flooding parts of England. It also kept away the dreaded midges but it did mean it was usually too cold to sit outside unless sheltered from the wind. Our hosts had central heating on in midsummer.
The graveyard at Bostadh Bay, with its carpet of buttercups, has to be the most idyllic setting for a burial ground anywhere in the country. I always enjoy visiting such places when on holiday. Stones here usually bear a name and date only. When a wife is buried with her husband she gets her maiden name back. In the Uists we found one burial ground with the majority Roman Catholics at the east end. You can tell them by the R.I.P. on every stone. At the west end were the minority Protestants. But here in Lewis one would expect this ground to be completely Protestant. We also saw graves of unknown merchant seamen, washed ashore in the second World War. They bear the date of burial and "Known unto God". Very sad. But look at this view. Is it not a place to die for?
Walk past the burial ground, down to the beach and you find a reconstruction of an Iron Age house, built in 1998. It is near where evidence of five Pictish jelly baby or figure of eight houses were found after a storm in 1993 uncovered the sand from their foundations. The site was beyond the present house over on the left of the bay. It is thought to date from around 500 A.D. before the Norse invasion.
Inside the house we were shown around by a very well informed local guide seen in the picture. She explained that the reconstruction was authentic in every way except for the roof. No-one knows exactly how these houses were roofed. Inside a fire would have continually burned. 
We lunched near this view of the bay. it was Friday and the first day we had managed to picnic outside. A cold North East wind had kept away the rain flooding parts of England. It also kept away the dreaded midges but it did mean it was usually too cold to sit outside unless sheltered from the wind. Our hosts had central heating on in midsummer.
No comments:
Post a Comment