Shieling

The rectangular buildings usually had gabled roofs covered in local materials such as turf, heather, or rushes, supported on timbers.

[7] Some sources consider shielings to differ from farmsteads in lacking an enclosure,[8] although they may be surrounded by a bank and ditch, or by a dry stone wall.

[7] The Welsh traveller and naturalist Thomas Pennant wrote the first description of Scottish shielings:[7] I landed on a bank covered with sheelins, the temporary habitations of some peasants who tend the herds of milch cows.

These formed a grotesque group; some were oblong, some conic, and so low that the entrance is forbidden without creeping through the opening, which has no other door than a faggot of birch twigs placed there occasionally; they are constructed of branches of trees covered with sods; the furniture a bed of heather; placed on a bank of sod, two blankets and a rug; some dairy vessels; and above, certain pendent shelves made of basket‑work, to hold the cheese, the product of the summer.

In one of the little conic huts I spied a little infant asleep.The shieling system was widespread across Europe, including upland Britain and Iceland.

[7] Turf-built shielings have typically gradually eroded and disappeared, but traces of stone-built structures persist in the landscape.

[18] Several of these are in Alexander Macdonald's 1914 Story and Song from Loch Ness-side, including "Cha teid mi Choir Odhar", "Chunacas gruagach ‘s an aonach", and "A fhlesgaich is cummaire", all from Perthshire, and "Luinneag Airidh" (a shieling lovesong).

[27] The Scottish poet Robert Burns mentions a "shiel" in his song "Bessy and her Spinnin' Wheel"[28] and his poem "The Country Lass".

Ruined shieling south of Oban
Plans of three different shielings, of increasing complexity. Shielings were mostly rectangular although often with rounded corners. Some had a single room, others two or three. There were few or no windows in the walls of turf or stone. [ 7 ]
18th-century shielings on the isle of Jura , from Thomas Pennant 's 1776 Voyage to the Hebrides
A ruined shieling close to the Loch Langavat path, Isle of Lewis
The scant ruins of a summer shieling at Catlodge, near Laggan , marked by a green area around the building where the land had been cleared, which contrasts with the heather moorland