Шотландияның Строма аралы: Тарихы мен табиғаты

Caithness' island in Pentland Firth off the north coast of Scotland

Stroma is an uninhabited island in the Pentland Firth, between Orkney and the mainland of Scotland. It forms part of the civil parish of Canisbay in Caithness, in the council area of Highland. The name comes from the Old Norse Straumey, meaning "island in the current". Ancient stone structures testify to the presence of Stroma's earliest residents, while a Norse presence around 900–1,000 years ago is recorded in the Orkneyinga Saga. It has been politically united with Caithness since at least the 15th century. Although Stroma lies only a few miles off the Scottish coast, the savage weather and ferociously strong tides of the Pentland Firth meant that the island's inhabitants were very isolated, causing them to be largely self sufficient, trading agricultural produce and fish with the mainlanders. Most of the islanders were fishermen and crofters; some also worked as maritime pilots to guide vessels through the treacherous waters of the Pentland Firth. The tides and currents meant that shipwrecks were frequent—the most recent occurring in 1993—and salvage provided an additional though often illegal supplement to the islanders' incomes. A lighthouse was built on Stroma in 1890 and still operates under automation. Stroma is now abandoned, with the houses of its former inhabitants unoccupied and falling into ruin. Its population fell gradually through the first half of the 20th century as inhabitants drifted away to seek opportunities elsewhere, as economic problems and Stroma's isolation made life on the island increasingly unsupportable. From an all time peak of 375 people in 1901, the population fell to just 12 by 1961 and the last islanders left at the end of the following year. Stroma's final abandonment came in 1997 when the lighthouse keepers and their families departed. The island is now owned by one of its former inhabitants, who uses it to graze sheep.

Stroma was inhabited in prehistoric times, as demonstrated by the presence of a number of ancient stone structures around the island. A ruined chambered cairn is situated at the far north end of the island near the lighthouse. It has been partially excavated and measures some in diameter by high. The 18th century inhabitants of the island collected the prehistoric stone arrowheads that they found on the western side of the island, believing them to be "elf shot", and regarded them as having been made by fairies. They believed that if they possessed an "elf shot" they would be granted protection for themselves and their cattle from any harm caused by the fairies. Structures similar to cists, which the islanders called "Picts' Beds", are also found on the island. Notable examples can be seen in the north near Nethertown. They are usually located near middens, out of which animal bones and shells are eroding. Little appears to be known about the purpose and origins of these structures. Although the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland attributes them to prehistory, it is also possible that they are Norse in origin. A kidney shaped burnt mound located near Castle Geo in the south east of Stroma can be more confidently ascribed to prehistory. It consists of an accumulation of cracked and scorched stones that were used to heat water in a communal cooking trough. Although the example on Stroma has not been dated, burnt mounds found elsewhere on Orkney and Shetland have been dated to the Bronze Age and the early Iron Age. The remains of an earth and stone fort are situated on the promontory of Bught o' Camm on the west coast of Stroma, near the north end of the island, though its origins are unknown. A rampart standing with an average spread of encloses an area of some and blocks off access to the promontory. There is no evidence of structures inside the fort's perimeter. It may possibly have been entered from the east end of the rampart, where a gap exists, but this may alternatively have been produced by natural processes.

Stroma's population fell precipitously through the first half of the 20th century, leading eventually to the island's final abandonment at the end of the 1950s. There was no single cause that precipitated the collapse of Stroma's population. Living conditions on the island were always basic; there was no running water or electricity, and gas only arrived in the 1950s, which contrasted poorly with the improvements being made on the mainland. The island was relatively overpopulated; by 1901 the population was nearly twice that of sixty years previously, and there was little spare land left for farming. Families of six to eight children were common, but there was simply not enough work for all, so the eldest often left for the mainland or emigrated to Canada or the United States to find work. The lack of a proper harbour meant that the islanders could not make use of larger boats or develop a modern fishery. Young people started moving away to seek better paying opportunities elsewhere, eventually followed by their parents. The Sinclairs of Mey sold their portion of the island to Colonel F. B. Imbert Terry in 1929, who sold it in turn to John Hoyland, an umbrella manufacturer from Yorkshire, in 1947. Hoyland also acquired the remaining island estate of the Sinclairs of Freswick, uniting Stroma for a reported cost of £4,000. His tenure coincided with the final collapse of the island's population. As the tenants left, Hoyland put Stroma on the market but found no buyers. A Caithness councilman suggested various schemes for Stroma, including establishing a naturist resort and using it as a site for a crematorium, but the council rejected suggestions that it should take on responsibility for the island. As the population left, the local economy disintegrated; there were no longer enough able bodied men to man the fishing boats, and the remaining facilities on the island were closed down for lack of custom. The last store on the island, the Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society shop, closed in 1956. Only three families, numbering 16 people in total, were left by 1957; that year, the island's school closed, by which time it only had two pupils. The Post Office closed in 1958 when the family which operated it left for the mainland. In the summer of 1958, Hoyland prompted controversy by offering the island to the American TV quiz show Bid 'n' Buy as a prize. In December 1960, he sold Stroma to Jimmy Simpson, an islander whose family had moved to farm on the mainland near the Castle of Mey in 1943. Simpson had not originally intended to buy the island but happened to be talking about it with a lawyer: "I said, 'I see Stroma was sold last week, and it's not sold this week. Is it on the market?' 'Yes,' he said, 'Stroma's for sale.' I said, "What kind of money?" So he told me what kind of money, and there and then, the lawyer wrote that I, James Simpson, offered to buy the island of Stroma at a certain figure, and I signed my name at the end of it." His wife was not enthusiastic about the purchase: "Lena nearly flew at me for being so stupid. She says, 'Stroma? What on earth are you going to do with an island?'". Although the head of the family, Andrew Manson, called the island "a paradise in summer" and a place where he was "free of outside distractions and watching my sons growing from boyhood to manhood – teaching them to live like men, to be dependent on no one," it was a bleak life for the women, who had applied for a council house at Scrabster, near Thurso.

Stroma is now entirely deserted by humans; its only permanent inhabitants are the seals, birds and sheep that live on the island. The church, school and old croft houses stand derelict, with many having fallen into ruin. Inside some of the houses, Bathurst writes, everyday objects still remain where they were left decades ago; "the bed and the limed matchboard ceiling are intact, untouched even by the damp. The kitchen table still stands in the parlour and a framed and fading photograph gazes out from the top of the mantelpiece." In another house seen 20 years earlier by Leslie Thomas, "was a rank of family photographs, shades in Victorian dress staring out forever into a room now desolate and holed, but which had once held the life of a warm family." Elsewhere, the books remain "dusty but tidy" in the abandoned school, and the church still contains its pulpit, "dumb and hung with ragged red tassles" with prayer books "left to be trampled upon by heathen sheep and nibbled by rabbits and rats." In the former post office, forms and licence applications and a bottle of dried ink still stand on the counter, while in a back room stands "a nice dresser, upon which [stands] a teapot and a jug and some sheet music: 'Red Sails in the Sunset', 'The General's Fast Asleep' and 'You Can't Do That There 'Ere.' Nobody on Stroma will ever sing those songs now." Bathurst and Thomas express contrasting views on the significance of Stroma's abandonment. Thomas regards it as a tragedy: "Of all the out of the way places I have known, this was the saddest. It seemed as though its life had been ended in a fit of pique." The MeyGen tidal energy array is located on the ocean floor to the south of the island of Stroma. It has four 1.5 MW tidal turbines, which harness the power of the fast flowing waters of the Inner Sound. They produced 25 GWh of electrical energy in 2019, enough to supply the electric needs of 4,000 homes. The project is being developed in a phased manner, with a potential capacity of 400 MW.

Stroma lacked a regular connection to the mainland until 1879, when the Post Office subsidised a weekly boat service from Huna on the mainland and established a post office on the island. However, the volume of mail from Stroma proved so small that the service was grossly uneconomical. By the 1950s, the Post Office was spending 1s. 2d. for each letter worth 2½d. in postage. It was not until 1894 that Stroma gained its first artificial landing point, a pier built from Portland cement near Nethertown at a cost of £800. Although it was intended to help stem the exodus of people from the island, Stroma was abandoned only a few years after the harbour's completion. Today, Stroma has no regular communications with the mainland. The island's owner ran occasional boat trips there on weekends for visitors, including Prince Charles, who painted watercolours of the abandoned houses.

In 1890, a lighthouse was built at Stroma's northern tip, Langaton Point. It was only operational for six years before being replaced, and very little is now known about the structure. The unmanned lighthouse originally housed a Trotter Lindberg lamp which burned petroleum spirit or lythene. The fuel supply was stored in cisterns near the lantern, which was regularly recharged at least fortnightly by the local fishermen or crofters. A fog warning system was installed the following year. The lighthouse was subjected to a machine gun attack by a German aircraft on 22 February 1941. It caused little damage and no injuries, and the keepers were soon able to make repairs. The lintel of the door bears the inscription "I. K." (Ioannes [i. e. John] Kennedy) and the date 1677. However, their popularity proved their undoing. In 1762 Bishop of Ross and Caithness Robert Forbes recorded in his journal that Murdoch Kennedy

By 1786 the mummies had been destroyed by cattle and careless visitors as, according to Walker's Hibernian Magazine, "curiosity to see the mummies had brought many idle people to Stroma, [and] that some, out of wantonness had shattered the door, and others the bodies; and the door not being repaired, sheep and cattle entered the vault, and trampled them to pieces." There is now no trace of the original burials in the vault.