During our 2024 and 2025 seasons excavating at the township of Achnacon we uncovered a large turf-walled house. Within the structure three hearths were identified, one within a stone setting flush with the floor surface and close to the Northern gable wall, another in the structure’s centre within a pit sealed with a cauldron fragment and slab, and one under a stone slab which sat flush with the floor level.
Why are there three hearths within this house? Presumably these aren’t contemporary. Why were these hearths abandoned, and new hearths set, during the life of the house?
This story aims to explore why these hearths may have been closed and the rhythms of life and death within this house, occupied for just under a century. The story is divided into different chapters, denoted by a line, which seperate moments in the biography of the house and its hearths.
Early 17th c. – in the reign of King James VI
The tacksman sat by the fire. Long strands of silver-white wove through his once copper beard, glinting in the dancing light of the peat fire flame. At his knee crouched his grandson, curiously poking the fire with a holly branch, watching cascades of sparks rise to the rafters where the great bowing crucks met amid blue peat smoke. The thick heather thatch a blackened purple faded into and out of view in the gloom of the darkening day, as the winter sun, never fully present, dropped round the face of the earth leaving a deepening blue sky outside, a glorious burnished red-orange light casting illuminstion and shadow upon the scarred face of An T-Sron and Aonach Dubh. A withered hand, once sword-strong, reached out to ruffle his grandsons unkempt locks, despite his daughter-in-law’s best efforts with the bone comb the boy’s hair was still wild, akin to the heather atop Clach Bhadan and similarly red.
Pin candles crackled in pewter holders in a corner of the room where his son sat mending a frayed grass rope. His wife, her hair usually like spun silver was illuminated its former gold in the fires glow, focused on the dizzying spirals of a spindle whorl in motion. The lead whorl’s patterned surfaces added to the hypnotic blur, the tacksman looked away. His wife hummed as she spun wool to thread, a tune he knew well from a thousand or more’s winter repetitions, the song told of trips to the shielings, and the youthful courtships that happened there, Bothan Àirigh am Bràigh Raithneach (The Shieling in the Braes of Rannoch). Their eyes met across the fire knowingly.
As the night drew in the women of the house gathered to lay the smooring stone across the hearth, to guard its flame until the embers could be rekindled in the morning. As they lowered the shaped slab of schist the mica in the stone’s surface reflected like silver in the candlelight amid a chorus of prayers from the women, smooring songs to bring protection to the herd and home.
Early 17th c. – in the reign of Charles I
The house felt cold, the women stirred in the corner, clearing flattened bedding of heather from the timber box bed. The hearth embers barely alive flickered in the floor as the men of the township assembled to carry their old tacksman to rest with his kin on Eilean Munde. As the pine wood coffin was carried out the women prepared to smoor the hearth for a final time. The embers were levelled. A hand gently dropped a handful of silver coins into the glowing ashes which glittered as they fell, landing with soft patters to send sparks cascading upwards. The slab was lowered for the final time, sealing the embers and the silver, within. As the smooring kept the hearth fire alive, closing the fire like this kept the protections imbued through the hearth alive, while cleansing the place of the touch of death. If the hearth was never reopened did those embers flicker with life still?
By the time the men returned from the shores of Loch Leven a new hearth was lit, just along the floor from the old and lit by embers caringly carried from the old hearth. The old tacksman’s wife laid a hand on the cooling slab in the floor from her stool seated still beside it. At the new hearth, her son embraced his wife, who sat by her loom bathed in the light of the new hearth, their son at his fathers knee.
Mid 17th c. – in the time of the Cromwellian Commonwealth
The tacksman, returned from a long day at the summerhouse up in Gleann Leac na Muidhe. The chief, a young man himself only recently seated in his fathers chair, had held court over his kin and clansmen after a successful days hunt. MacDonald of Achnacon hummed a tune as he swung into his home, a pouch on his belt tinkled with coins, it hadn’t been a bad session at the checkers board. As he passed into the house he paused before the slab on the floor, where the old hearth had been, he shook his head and joined his wife by their hearth, his son now at his elbow. His head still rung, whether from the boisterous revelry, the din of the pipes in the not-so-large hall, or the drink, he’d consumed plenty, he couldn’t decide.
His eye’s blurred briefly from the smoke which hung low in the house’s interior. Then he settled into a low stool by the fire. From his belt he drew a new knife blade he had won from the chief in the hunt. His arrow had struck the hind first and it was his great hound which first corralled the stag. He reached for a stave he had taken among the firrs which covered the ground between Achnacon (the field of the dogs) and the Achnambeithach (the field of the birches). Using the new knife blade, one forged and bought in Edinburgh on the Chief’s return from Paris, he began to split and shape the stave into two knife handles. Carefully in the fire’s dimming light he cut a cross hatch into the handle taking care with the parallel stripes, such that the handle took on the look of scales, as if from the beast of Beinn a’ Bheithir (Peak of the Thunderbolt). This would be a knife to brag about on the next hunt as he took the hunters cut, perhaps by the banks of Lochan na Fola (The loch of Blood). The dark wood reaching a fine polish reflected the hearth flame as did the bright blade of the knife. He tucked it into his belt to finish later.
“A good hunt?”
He nodded. Then pulled off his boots, padding over to the bed of heather against the wall and slumping in on weary legs, pulling a thick woollen blanket dyed in russet reds, rich grassy greens and lichen gold..
Later 17th c. – in the reign of Charles II
A new Tacksman entered the turf walled house. His cousin, the previous tacksman, had passed but a few years ago in a fight somewhere in the East. Now another stood as the MacDonald of Achnacon.
As was tradition the women of the house had sealed the old hearth with silver coins and a smooring stone. With the changing of tacksman, the key to the old coin chest was buried two and a new one bought from Fort William. The old iron cauldron of the family was shattered too, dashed against the great grey bands of bedrock veined with quartz which loomed above the house, its pieces scattered across the farmlands of Achnacon. Pieces were placed in the corn kiln and on the fields and kailyards to bless their sustaining bounty, others were placed within the walls of the houses to wrap those protections into the very home. A final fragment was used to cap the closed hearth.
A new hearth was set out, at the Northern wall of the house, surrounded by handsome schist slabs as was the style. Against this far wall the new tacksman could sit, illuminated by the fire and do the business of managing his township and tenants in the style of their chief and the lords he had met on his travels. MacDonald of Achnacon was often busy in his new role allocating stretches of the head dykes to maintain; managing the changing of hands of areas of the rig and furrow which sprawled out from the township as far as the Alt na Muidhe to the South, the Coe to the East, Meal Mor’s rocky slopes to the West and the boundary with the lands of Inverigan to the North; or identifying whose cattle had been late to the shielings or whose goats had escaped into the firr-forests. The task of managing this fermtoun, and gathering rents to pass to his cousin the Chief, was a huge task and often he called his brother the MacDonald of Achtriochtan around to help.
He had laid a new floor of earth and cobbles, pulled from the nearby burn, to be covered each year with a fresh carpet of heather, bracken and rushes, the slabs of the older hearths slowly sunk beneath the accumulating earth, occasionally to emerge as the floor was swept or the covering cleared before a new layer of covering was laid, bringing reminders of those who held this duty before.
Late 17th c. – in the reign of James VII (in exile)
The late winter snows had arrived, and with them a detachment of troops from Fort William to be billeted in this township, and the others of the glen. His brother MacDonald of Achtriochtan stood in the centre of the room, regaling their gathered tenants with tales of his exploits at Killiecrankie. Almost every man here had been there, and whether the story bore great resemblance to the truth or not… was a question few bothered to consider… so swept up were they in the dramatic tale. Outside the harsh wind whipped up crystals of snow lending a sharp note to its howl. The inky darkness beyond the door and the noise within isolated those gathered from world beyond.
The rents had been lean this year too, between the ongoing troubles and now the pressure to feed additional mouths before seeds had even been sown, the small chest of coin he kept for when the tenants part-paid in cash was almost bare. Just eight small coins sat at the bottom, not enough for a pint of ale in Aberdeen, alongside a small coin weight for when the trader passed through and a disk of brass gun-money. He lifted a piece of gun-money and watched the coin shine almost like gold in the firelight. Alas the promise it held seemed unlikely to come to pass. ‘1690’ was stamped on one side. They said these coins were minted from melted down cannons, he wondered why valuable guns would be melted down in war. On the reverse the proud features of James VII scowled outwards – a promise of return, that now seemed as distant as the promise of silver the gunmoney offered.
MacDonald of Achnacon, huddled by his hearth looking at his records as the story continued.
The door flung open with a crack, unleashing a twisting flurry of snow on the gale into the dark smoky warmth of the house. He looked up in confusion, who could be stirring at this hour, when the men were already gathered here?
From here the story is well ken’t…
By Dr Edward Stewart
Sources
The sources for many of the tales written or interpretations formed through this story are given as links within the text. Local folklore gathered by Barbara Fairweather of the Glencoe Folk Museum shaped much of this work, as did other sources of local and regional folk traditions.
The characters portrayed in this tale, while based on figures known from the historical record, have been largely fictionalised in order to bring to life the biography of this house, and to give a sense of how the three hearths may have come to be. The events of the Glencoe Massacre described briefly at the stories end are based on accounts from the inquiry, and the archaeology of the tacksman’s house. We will pick up this tale at a later point!
This post is heavily based on the 2024 and 2025 seasons of the Glencoe Field School – co-directed by Derek Alexander (NTS) and I – and supported by our directors, supervisors and assistants, finds and environmental specialists, students and volunteers.
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