IT was an extraordinary leap of faith. A letter deposited in a small and what was hoped was a water-tight box and then cast into the Atlantic, bound for the mainland.
One of the most unusual items in a Highland museum’s collection has given insight into 19th century life on Britain’s most remote archipelago.
By the late 1890s a unique system of mail dispatch had developed on the Scottish islands of St Kilda.
Letters were enclosed in a waterproof receptacle, made of whatever islanders could find, attached to a make-shift buoy and launched into the water in the hope they would wash ashore and be forwarded onto the right person.
The one pictured is among the most unusual of its kind and on display at the West Highland Museum in Fort William, which opened in 1922, seven years before the last 36 St Kilda inhabitants were evacuated from Hirta, at their own request.
The archipelago is the remotest – and windiest – outpost of the British Isles, 41 miles west of Benbecula and 112 miles off the mainland. However, there is evidence one of the last St Kilda mailboxes was picked up in Norway.
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Museum curator Vanessa Martin said: “All we have on our files is that
it came to us before 1938. We’ve got no record of who gave it to us or when it arrived.
“By the 1890s the islanders were using the mail box as a way to stay
in touch. They would enclose the letters in the wooden compartment you can see in the photograph and then they tied it with a length of rope and would throw it into the sea.
“They could be made of anything. What we have got is almost unique but there are photographs from the Postal Museum’s website (in London) that you can find, where they were making them from bits of sheep’s bladders.
“I think they were aiming then at the Isle of Lewis but, depending on the current, it could take weeks or months.
“There was a case of one ending up in Norway but the mail did get through because it was forwarded on. I believe it was one of the last sent before the islanders left.”
Museum staff have been sharing images of some of the most interesting “mystery objects” from the collection online, while it remains closed and inviting the public to guess their function.
Ms Martin said: “One of our regulars commented within minutes with the right answer but people followed on from there with all sorts of weird suggestions. The strangest one was keeping people under control on a nudist beach.
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“Some of the items in the Alexander Carmichael collection [Scottish exciseman, folklorist, antiquarian, and author] really are mystery objects because he didn’t note what they were.”
A bronze cast of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s death mask is also on display in the museum’s Jacobite Exhibition.
Barnar dina Lucchesi, one of a family of modellers in Rome, is thought to have brought the mask to Scotland in 1839. Lucchesi settled in Glasgow where he continued to work as a modeller until 1863.
Ms Martin said: “When he fell on hard times, some of his belongings, including the mask, were sold. Eventually, the mask ended up
being purchased by a sculptor named Ferguson.
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"When it came into Ferguson’s possession it was said to have hairs attached adhering to the eyebrows and eyelids.
“The mask came to the museum in 1951 via a prominent Scottish figure, who stipulated their name should not be connected with the mask.
"Although this person has now passed away, we continue to respect their wishes.”
The museum will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2022 and is planning to mark the milestone in a unique way based around another historical treasure in the collection.
She said: “On the eve of Culloden, Bonnie Prince Charlie commissioned a plate with the expectation he could make his own money for the Jacobite army. Of course, the money was never issued as they lost at Culloden, 48 hours later.
“The plate was discovered at the end of Loch Laggan in 1746 and it stayed with the MacPherson clan until 1928 and when the estate was sold the museum bought it.
“When the plate came to us, a well-known artist printed banknotes from it so we are looking to see if we can work with an Edinburgh printmaker to do the same for our 100th birthday.”
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