Gairloch Heritage Museum

Gairloch Heritage Museum is an independent museum in the Wester Ross region of Scotland. The museum is located in the Highland village of Gairloch, in Achtercairn.

Gairloch Heritage Museum from the A832

The museum was set up in 1977 by the Gairloch Parish Branch of the Ross & Cromarty Heritage Society. This would later become the Gairloch & District Heritage Society and then the Gairloch & District Heritage Company Ltd.

They applied and were successful in converting part of the existing farm steading in Achtercairn to form a heritage museum and clubs rooms for members during the winter months for lectures, films etc. The year later they applied and were successful in converting the second wing of farm steading to extend the museum as the current building was too small to house the exhibits. The library extension was added in 1987 and an extension for the Rudha Reidh lighthouse lens in 1988.

The museum was created due to concern of possible damage to the growing collection of artefacts that had been donated by local people such as the Pictish Stone and thus they investigated means to protect it. The Company wanted to provide a wet weather facility for tourists for them to appreciate aspects of Gairloch’s past. Members of the Company were interested in displaying objects relating to archaeology, farming, fishing, and domestic utensils etc, those that showed the history of the West Coast.

In 2017 the board of Gairloch Heritage Museum announced that they obtained a grant from Heritage Lottery Fund to complete the transformation of a nearby nuclear bunker into a new museum for Gairloch. This new museum is due to open in spring 2019[1].


Features

The museum contains various displays and exhibitions which focus on the culture and social history of Gairloch parish. Displays include:

  • Illicit Whiskey Still
  • Original Fresnel lens from nearby Rudha Reidh Lighthouse
  • Maps showing distribution of ancient hut circles in the area (trail leaflets available)
  • Croft house interior from over 100 years ago
  • An ancient Pictish stone - the first and one of very few found on the West Coast of Scotland
    A photograph of the ancient Pictish Stone found at the Museum

References

Coordinates: 57°43′42″N 5°41′26″W / 57.7284°N 5.6905°W / 57.7284; -5.6905

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.