I am planning on building a shieling this summer like in the one in the picture which I took the other day of a long abandoned one.
Shielings are small stone cabins which Scottish people lived in during the Summer time to graze their sheep. I plan on useing mine as a shelter in the Summer time which will be my base of operation when I'm out and about on the moors and hills of my local area.
I'm doing research right now on dry stone building techniques so I was wondering if anyone here has any links to places with information or has experience in this type of building and could give me some tips.
The idea for it so it so far is to have an interior floor area of of 3 metres by 2 metres an interior height of 1.8 metres. The only feature I am interesting in having at the moment is a fire place with chimney.
Here is a picture from the inside of the shieling.
On the left is a fire place in which I'm cooking some soup. On the right are a couple of interesting artifacts, a cast iron stove and a tea pot.
Close up of the stove. The chimney pipe has rusted and broken of.
>>759557
Forgot the image.
>>759552
Where are you planning on building this? Here in the US you'd only be allowed to build something like that on your own private property, can you just build a structure like that on some random public land there in Scotland or do you own some property out in the sticks?
>>759561
Pretty much the whole moor of the island is owned by the local government which doesn't use it for anything and so doesn't care what people do.
>>759572
That's cool. We can tramp about in National Forests and other government land pretty much unrestricted but they really frown upon people building permanent / semi-permanent structures.
>>759579
Aye. It is against the law to build without permission but I have here all my life so believe when I say for a structure of this size no one even if they find out will mind.
The land doesn't even have natural beauty tourist value.
Also another pic looking out of the door. This particular building look to have been one of the last occupied shieling which would have been about 50 to 60 years ago.
>>759552
So is this on the Isle of Lewis?
>>759703
Yes