Monument record 817 - ST KILDA VILLAGE, THE BULL'S HOUSE

NF19NW 21.03 1001 9956.

This small drystone building lies in an area NW of Tobar Childa and, comparable in some respects with the houses built in the 1830s, it is the only oblong gabled structure outside the head dyke. Mr Lachlan MacDonald has confirmed that in the 19th century it was built on common land for the bull that was sent to St Kilda by the Department of Agriculture. Similar buildings for housing a township bull exist on common grazings elsewhere in the Hebrides at, for example, Grenitote, North Uist, and Breakish, Skye.
The building measures internally 2.85m in length from E to W by 1.93m transversely. The walls are up to 1.3m thick, and the gable walls rise to a height of 1.98m. Because of a fall in ground-level the S side-wall stands to an external height of 2.24m, and the SW angle is buttressed in relation to the enclosure-wall; the other end of the S wall abuts the E gable and there is no bonding in the lower courses on the inner face. The lintelled doorway in the centre of the E gable-wall is 1.25m high and 0.89m wide. In the interstices of the inner face of the N side-wall there are small pieces of dried cattle dung.
In a photograph of 1886, this structure appears thatched and without gables, and the ruinous enclosure with which it is now associated was then complete, having since been dismantled, probably to build Cleit 141 nearby.
G P Stell and M Harman 1988.

G P and M Stell and Harman, 1988, Buildings of St Kilda, 37, no. 3 (Bibliographic reference). SWE8255.