Arnol Blackhouse / Isle of Lewis ***

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Description:

One of Scotland’s most evocative historic buildings, the Arnol Blackhouse is not so much a museum as a perfectly preserved fragment of a lost world. This museum takes you back to simpler times when life in a long, narrow, often damp earthen house with a thatched roof and peat-burning fire pit (with no chimney) was the norm in the Outer Hebrides. The blackhouse at No. 42 in the small village of Arnol has been wonderfully preserved to give visitors a sense of rural life over the last century, with many of the furnishings left just as they were when the last

residents moved out in the 1960s. At the visitor centre in a nearby cottage, you can learn more about why these dwellings were called blackhouses and how people managed to live under the same roof with their farm animals.