St Kilda

St Kilda lies sixty-four kilometres west of Benbecula, the most remote part of the British Isles that was permanently inhabited. A community lived on Hirta for at least two thousand years, subsisting largely on seabirds taken from the cliffs, storing them in over a thousand stone cleitean, drystone chambers built across the islands, and paying rent in feathers and oil. The population fell through the nineteenth century and the last thirty-six residents asked to be evacuated in August 1930. Conachair on Hirta has the highest sea cliffs in Britain at 430 metres, and Stac an Armin is the highest sea stack. The islands hold around a million seabirds including the world's largest northern gannet colony, over fifty-nine thousand pairs at the 2023 count, on Boreray and its stacks. It is a dual UNESCO site, for nature and culture.

History

St Kilda was long known to have been lived on for two thousand years or more, from the Bronze Age until 1930, and in 2015 pottery in the Hebridean style found east of the village gave the first direct evidence of Neolithic settlement, probably in the 4th millennium BC. An Icelandic cleric may have sheltered on the islands called Hirtir in 1202, Norse place names point to a lasting Viking presence, and the islands belonged to the MacLeods of Harris, whose steward came once a year to collect rents; Donald Munro described the people in 1549, and in 1697 a visiting writer found 180 inhabitants. The name St Kilda, which honours no known saint, first appears on a pilot book of 1592, perhaps by a copying error, and the community on Hirta, weakened by illness brought by visitors and by the upheaval of the First World War, was evacuated in 1930 (Wikipedia, St Kilda, Scotland).

Highlights

• The village street - the 1830s houses and cleitean of the evacuated settlement.
• Conachair - Britain's highest sea cliffs at 430 metres.
• The gannetry - the world's largest colony, on Boreray and its stacks.
• The stone cleitean - over a thousand drystone stores across the islands.

When to go

May to August, and only in settled weather; crossings take two to three hours each way in open Atlantic and cancel more often than they run. Landings depend on swell at the jetty even after arrival.

Good to know

Cancellations are the norm rather than the exception and several attempts may be needed. The crossing is rough and seasickness is widespread. Time ashore on a day trip is around four hours. There are no facilities beyond a small shop run by the ranger base, and no accommodation for visitors except work parties.

Nearby

Harris and the Uists are the nearest land; the archipelago itself is the destination.

Key facts