On the shores of Loch Tay, slices of dark turf are piled high alongside bundles of pale reeds. Over the month of May, local volunteers will turn these raw materials into a replica iron age roundhouse, in what will mark a rising from the ashes for one of Scotland’s best-loved living history museums.
In June 2021, the Scottish Crannog Centre suffered a devastating blow when its replica roundhouse burned down in just six minutes. The cause of the blaze has not been ascertained, though police have ruled out anything suspicious.
An outpouring of support followed, both locally and nationally, with £50,000 donated within a fortnight, a testament to the appeal of this unique open-air museum, which offers visitors the chance to take part in iron age crafts, such as weaving and pottery, as well as continuing the serious archaeological work of local crannog excavation.
Now, with a grant of £2.3m from the Scottish government, the centre is rebuilding on a new site directly across the loch, on land transferred from the forestry commission.
Crannogs, which were common across Scotland and Ireland, are houses built on stilts over water, usually with a bridge connecting them to the shore. The first crannogs in Scotland were built on lochs and firths in the early iron age, about 2,500 years ago.
Looking out across the water from the new site at Dalerb, assistant director Rachel Backshall picks out four submerged crannogs visible from this vantage point. “They existed in different forms up to the 17th century, and there are 17 on Loch Tay alone,” she says. “We are surrounded by the archaeology we’re talking about.”
The museum celebrates crannogs not only for the skills and technologies required to build and maintain them but also for the way they hold information about the past: as underwater sites, they often reveal unprecedented levels of preservation, providing a rare glimpse of prehistoric life.
The plan is now is for volunteers to finish building a land-based roundhouse over the summer and for construction of a new crannog, over water, to begin in the winter.
As with the original museum, which remains open, the new site will include a replica iron age village with demonstration shelters for cookery, metalworking, weaving and woodcraft, as well as eco-friendly modular buildings for a new cafe, museum and shop.
The centre is aiming for its new incarnation to become Scotland’s most sustainable museum, in terms not just of carbon count, but of craft, skills and sustainability of materials.
“Everything we’re doing now is directly inspired by what people did 2,500 years ago,” says Rich Hiden, another assistant director. “It might seem that we’re doing something cutting edge to be super sustainable but the practice and skills are all bedded in what the crannog people did. They were living in a way we can learn from today.”
Sustainability and access may be familiar heritage sector buzzwords, but a visit to the centre underlines how creatively embedded this museum is in its wider community.
Refugee integration groups, members of Perthshire Women’s Aid and local schools will be visiting to assist with the community build. “People are building themselves into a shared heritage,” says Backshall.
The centre also offers one-to-one mentoring for young people struggling with mainstream education, and welcomes a wide range of volunteers for its diverse audience. Archaeology graduate Rebecca Davies, 50, made the 12-hour drive from her home in north Wiltshire to help out after reading about the fire. She is now starting her first paid job as a heritage interpreter over the summer season. She explains that she was 35 when she was diagnosed with autism: “Museums can help because they are full of quirky people anyway.”
In the museum, curator Amy Stewart is sorting through boxes of unsourced pottery fragments from a nearby crannog site. “The contents of the museum have been really under-studied so we love to have students with a particular interest coming in,” she says.
She lays out a few fragments where the fingerprints of the iron age folk who sculpted them are still visible. Because skin oils do not affect even ancient pottery such as this, visitors are encouraged to place their contemporary fingers in the prehistoric prints.
“It’s a very different way of thinking about leaving your mark on history. Everyone can make their mark, not just kings and queens.”
