St Kilda: Edge of the World. Floating 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides, the St Kilda archipelago rises out of the Atlantic like the last jagged thought of land. This is no ordinary island group — it’s a place of astonishing natural drama and profound human resilience, a dual UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of the most remote and evocative places in Britain.
Once home to a unique, self-sufficient community that thrived by harvesting seabirds and withstood Atlantic gales for two millennia, St Kilda is now uninhabited, but its stone cleits, dramatic cliffs, and swirling seabird colonies still tell its story.
How to Get to St Kilda
Getting to St Kilda is an adventure in itself. Most visitors travel on a long day trip by fast RIB or motor vessel from the Isle of Harris, Uig on Skye, or Berneray and Leverburgh. Operators like Kilda Cruises, Sea Harris, and Go to St Kilda run sailings between May and September, weather permitting.
Boats usually land at Hirta, the largest island, where visitors can explore the historic village, view seabird cliffs, and even climb the island’s high points. A typical visit includes 4–5 hours ashore, with over 8 hours at sea. Wild camping is permitted but must be arranged in advance through the National Trust for Scotland.
A Remote Life: The Early History of St Kildans
St Kilda was inhabited for at least 2,000 years, possibly much longer. The islanders grew barley and rye, kept black-faced sheep and cattle, and survived above all by harvesting the abundant seabird life. Every part of the bird was used — meat for food, oil for lamps, feathers for bedding, and skins for cloaks and bags.
Islanders famously scaled vertical cliffs using ropes and bare feet to gather fulmars, puffins, and gannets from sea stacks and ledges. Boys were trained from childhood in bird catching techniques. In the 17th century, a strong adult male was expected to collect up to 1,000 birds per year. They would spend weeks working on narrow ledges on the stacks, exposed to wind and spray, enduring unimaginable hardship for survival.
The birds were then dried or salted, and stored in cleits — over 1,200 drystone storehouses scattered across the slopes of Hirta. These turf-roofed, airy structures were used to keep birds, eggs, peat, grain, ropes, and tools dry and safe from scavengers. Some still contain old bones and feathers today.
The Men of Boreray: Nine Months Stranded by Disease
Another remarkable and haunting tale comes from 1727, when three men and eight boys rowed from Hirta to Stac an Armin near Boreray, one of the sea stacks north of the main island, for the annual seabird hunt. Their task was to collect birds and eggs, staying for a few weeks in stone bothies on the stack, as was custom.
But while they were away, smallpox struck Hirta. The disease swept through the island, killing many and incapacitating those who remained. With no one healthy enough to launch a boat, the men on the sea stack were abandoned — not out of cruelty, but inability.
They remained stranded for nine months, exposed to the elements, surviving only on seabirds, eggs, and rainwater. With no way to know what had happened back home, they likely feared the worst — and rightly so.
When they were finally rescued, they found a broken and diminished community. The episode left a lasting impression on St Kildan memory and was retold for generations as a symbol of both the islanders’ resilience and their vulnerability to fate.
Secrets and Scandal: Lady Grange
One of St Kilda’s strangest stories is that of Lady Grange, exiled to the island in 1734 by her politically connected husband. Her crime? Spreading rumours about his Jacobite ties and generally being “a nuisance.” She was held prisoner for eight years, before being moved to Skye where she died in 1745. A large cleit is sometimes pointed out as her prison, though historians doubt the accuracy.
Short Walks on Hirta
While most of St Kilda’s islands are inaccessible without climbing gear, Hirta offers a few fantastic walks for visitors with good footwear and a sense of adventure. One popular route is the walk to The Gap, a dramatic notch in the cliffs where puffins wheel and the Atlantic roars far below. Another ascends Conachair, the island’s highest point at 430m, offering jaw-dropping views over Village Bay, the sea stacks, and Stac Lee.
Shorter strolls include a wander through the village street, past roofless cottages, the old church and schoolhouse, and dozens of cleits. The sense of abandonment is powerful — a mix of beauty, loss, and awe.
Religion, Restriction and the Fall of a Culture
In 1829, Reverend Neil Mackenzie arrived on Hirta and began reshaping the island’s life. He built a church and manse, reorganised farming, and improved education and housing. His intentions were kind — and many of his changes practical — but later ministers brought a stricter form of Free Church Presbyterianism that had lasting consequences.
Reverend John Mackay, who served from 1865 to 1889, demanded that islanders attend long, daily religious meetings. Sabbath observance was rigid. Dance, music, and games were discouraged or banned. Islanders, already isolated, became emotionally and culturally stifled. The traditional balance of life — rooted in nature and community — was shaken.
By the late 1800s, a series of illnesses, food shortages, and emigration took their toll. In 1912, near-starvation was narrowly avoided thanks to an emergency delivery of food. And then, the modern world reached even this far frontier.
War, Bombardment and the End of a People
In 1918, a German U-boat shelled Hirta, firing more than 70 shells into the village. A second attack was thwarted weeks later when a Royal Navy trawler struck back, damaging the submarine before it fled north and was captured near the Flannan Isles.
After World War I, life became harder still. A wireless transmitter was installed to allow emergency contact, but morale declined. Finally, in 1930, with only 36 islanders remaining and life unsustainable, the last residents asked to be evacuated. They were resettled on the mainland. The final nurse, Williamina Barclay, supervised the move, and the last sheep were removed from Soay.
What Remains: National Trust Ownership and Military
One of the most heartbreaking stories from St Kilda involves the loss of several newborn children due to tetanus infections, caused unintentionally by a traditional practice.
St Kildans relied heavily on the fulmar — a seabird abundant on the cliffs — for food, fuel, and medicine. Fulmar oil was believed to have healing properties and was used liberally for treating wounds and soothing the skin. After childbirth, it was customary for mothers to apply this oil to the umbilical cords of their newborns as a protective measure.
Tragically, what they didn’t know was that the fulmar oil, stored in unclean containers or applied with unsterilised hands, was often contaminated with tetanus bacteria. Without access to modern hygiene or vaccinations, several infants died shortly after birth from neonatal tetanus — a painful and entirely preventable condition. The cause wasn’t understood at the time, and the grief must have been immense. It stands as a devastating example of how traditional knowledge, when combined with isolation, can tragically backfire.
The exact dates of the fulmar oil–related tetanus deaths in newborns on St Kilda are not always precisely recorded in historical accounts, but they most likely occurred during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly between the 1860s and 1920s.
This tragic pattern was documented by visiting doctors and nurses who were increasingly involved with the health of the St Kildans in the years leading up to the evacuation in 1930. Medical visitors observed that a high number of infants died shortly after birth, and it was eventually linked to the application of contaminated fulmar oil to umbilical cords. The practice was well-intentioned, based on generations of local use of fulmar oil for treating wounds and chapped skin.
The issue was especially tragic because the oil was a symbol of survival for the islanders — essential for food, fuel, and medicine — but became the accidental cause of death when applied to newborns without understanding the risks of infection.
Health services were minimal, and although a nurse (such as Williamina Barclay) was finally stationed on the island shortly before the 1930 evacuation, by then the long-term effects of isolation and traditional practices had taken a toll.
In 1931, the Marquess of Bute bought St Kilda, and in 1956 it was gifted to the National Trust for Scotland, which has owned and managed the archipelago ever since. In 1957, a MOD missile tracking base was installed and still operates under QinetiQ, employing about 120 people across St Kilda and Benbecula. However, no civilians live there permanently, and visitors experience a rare silence broken only by seabirds and surf.
Wildlife and the Seabird Crisis
St Kilda is one of Europe’s most important seabird sites. Its sea stacks and cliffs host:
- The world’s largest colony of northern gannets (over 60,000 pairs)
- The UK’s largest colony of fulmars
- Tens of thousands of puffins, guillemots, razorbills and kittiwakes
But there are signs of crisis. Fulmar numbers have dropped from 60,000 pairs to just 20,000 — a dramatic decline linked to climate change and shifting ocean ecosystems.
The cliffs of Conachair plunge 430 metres into the sea, making them the highest in Britain. The nearby Stac an Armin and Stac Lee were once used by islanders to collect birds and eggs — their remains are visible in cleits and stone shelters at the top.
Today, the islands are also home to the St Kilda wren, a subspecies found nowhere else, and the Soay sheep, a rare primitive breed left behind after the evacuation.
Nonetheless, visiting during the breeding season (late spring to early summer) is a spectacle — cliffs alive with shrieking birds, whirling squadrons of gannets, and the earthy smell of sea colonies.
Why Visit St Kilda?
St Kilda: Edge of the World. To walk through the ruins of a vanished civilisation, surrounded by birds, cliffs and wind, is like stepping into another world. St Kilda isn’t a place you simply “see” — it’s a place you feel. A place where human resilience met the limits of nature. Where seabirds scream into the Atlantic wind, and stories linger in the stone. Find out more at the Scottish National Trust website.
It’s hard to reach. It’s unpredictable. But it’s also unforgettable.
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