Undiscovered Scotland

 

Borreraig Park Museum and Croft Shop is no longer open. The rest of this page remains as written before the closure, to allow virtual visitors a glimpse of what the museum had to offer.

Borreraig Park Museum and Croft Shop occupy a purpose-built low white building just to the north of the minor road that cuts across the flank of Scoval from Glendale to Borreraig, close to where it meets the minor road that comes up the west shore of Loch Dunvegan from Colbost.

It is one of a trio of fascinating museums to be found in the unlikely setting of the northern part of Skye's Duirinish peninsula. The others are the Colbost Croft Museum and the Glendale Toy Museum. Together they form a triangle that gives good reason to head west from Dunvegan, even on a driech day.

Borreraig Park has three main elements. By far the largest is the extensive collection of items relating to the history of the area, to rural life on Skye, and to farming, all gathered together in thematic groups with excellent labelling. The second comprises a series of displays setting out the history of the MacCrimmon pipers, the hereditary pipers to the MacLeods of Dunvegan.

And the third element is the well-stocked croft shop, which offers for sale a range of local crafts, wool, knitwear, jewellery, CDs, piping accessories and music, and more.

For the avoidance of confusion, it is perhaps worth also saying what Borreraig Park is not. It is not the Borreraig Piping Heritage Centre which, until 1999, operated from what is now a private house in the township of Borreraig, a mile or so north of Borreraig Park overlooking the clifftop monument marking the site of the MacCrimmon Piping School.

The range of exhibits on view at Borreraig Park is amazing, if sometimes idiosyncratic. One area is home to an original Harris tweed loom made in the 1800s, while nearby are a wide range of other textile related exhibits. These include everything from early tartan clothing through military uniforms to a knitting machine: while nearby is a large collection of water jugs made to help promote different brands of scotch whisky.

Elsewhere a domestic living room and kitchen have been recreated. The former comes complete with a tin bath in front of the range (and its discreetly-positioned occupant), while the kitchen comes complete with, well, just about everything you could possibly think of. Did you know that they once made paraffin irons for ironing clothes? Well you can see one here. Perhaps the real joy for older visitors of this sort of display lies in the sudden recognition of something not seen since a childhood visit to the home of an elderly relative. And with it the sudden realisation of just how much our lives have changed in such a relatively short time.

Other areas of the museum cover everything from natural history to agriculture: and the range of agricultural implements and artefacts is typically extensive, ranging from a cart through an endless variety of saws to an amazing pedal-operated threshing machine.