THE BOATIE HOOSE

A drawing of the Boatie Hoose by William Watt, 2024

Thanks to a grant from the North Isles Landscape Partnership, the derelict Boatie Hoose was renovated in 2023 by WRC (Orkney), and visitors are now encouraged to step inside and explore the space for themselves.

Three interpretation boards hang on the partition behind the little blue door to tell the story of the Boatie Hoose, from its beginnings as a lifeboat of the ill-fated Athenia (the first British passenger ship to be torpedoed by a German U-boat at the start of the Second World War), through its arrival in Orkney and its use as a boat for carrying cargo (especially tangles), to its final rendition as a little house on the shore of Stronsay Harbour.

Walter Heywood captured the sorry state of the Boatie Hoose in 2015 (with the Earl Thorfinn in the background).

The Athenia lifeboat pulled up on the shore of the Lower Station during the time it was used to haul tangles (kelp fronds; Laminaria digitata or oarweed), an important part of Stronsay's kelp industry in the 1940s.

TIDAL TOILETS

Tidal toilets, like the ones preserved in Stronsay 2023 (thanks to a project sponsored by the North Isles Landscape Partnership), were once common in coastal villages, but there are now only two examples still surviving in Orkney. This building was constructed when the herring fishing was at its height in Stronsay and would have been in daily use by the hundreds of gutter lasses, coopers and workers employed in the area. It was, of course, a unisex toilet with little privacy and was flushed twice a day by the rising tide.