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Photo: Tdecember (talk) (Uploads), CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Blackhouses like these were the traditional dwellings of this island where timber was scarce but stones and thatch were plentiful. People and animals shared the interior, with a fug from the peat fire that must never be allowed to go out. Opposite is the "white house" occupied from the 1920s, thereafter the blackhouse was used as the cattle byre until the 1960s. The site is closed each September for re-thatching.
Arnol is a small village typical of many settlements of the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Arnol is within the parish of Barvas, and is situated on the A858.
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Two thatched buildings that have been "netted" and the nets weighted with stones to keep the roof from being ripped away by high winds. The larger is a kiln for drying grain, so it operated at relatively low temperature, whereas the heat of a pottery kiln would make short work of a thatched building. The smaller is a click mill or Norse mill, where the waterwheel is set horizontally in the flow of a mill lade. This means it doesn't need gears, but directly drives grindstones to render wheat into flour. It was used into the 1930s, restored in 1968 and again in 1996. Use the parking lot on the main road and follow the track a quarter-mile north.
A village of blackhouses occupied until the 1970s. Nine have been restored: one as a hostel and others as self-catering cottages, see Sleep. The one you visit is a museum showing village life circa 1960, not long after electricity reached the area.
A broch or round tower built around 200 BC and inhabited until 1000 AD; it was a hideout of cattle thieves in the 17th century. Parts of the broch walls still reach their original height of 9 m.
Iconic of Lewis, this is the chief circle ("Callanish I") of an extensive ritual landscape. It was erected some time 2900-2600 BC and is an irregular circle of 13 stones surrounding a monolith, with a cross of avenues or aligned stones radiating. A chambered tomb within the circle was added later: it was only discovered when 19th-century peat-cutting revealed the true height of the stones. They're of local gneiss and have no obvious astronomical alignment.
On A858 is a monument to a failed attempt in 1850 to turn these peat bogs into arable farmland. A settlement was built near the existing village of Lochganvich, but within a year all the settlers had despaired and left.
Comunn Eachdraidh Nis
Local history museum, archive and cafe.