Lady Grange's House, St Kilda

Lady Grange's House, St Kilda

ID: QZP99_97107_04_02 DESCRIPTION: This cleit (a beehive-type dwelling) is said to be the house in which Lady Grange was confined while banished to the island of Hirta. However, there is no evidence to support this. Lady Grange (Rachel Chiesley, 1682-1745) was married to James Erskine, the Scottish Lord Advocate. After the couple separated in 1730 she began to spread rumours that he was a Jacobite sympathiser. He claimed she was insane and, later, that she was dead. While her funeral was staged in Edinburgh she was abducted and imprisoned on North Uist before being taken, in 1734, to Hirta, the largest island in the St Kilda archipelago. While there she was not completely isolated - she had a constant supply of provisions and a woman to wait on her. She managed to alert friends to her circumstances by sending a letter to Edinburgh but they were unable to rescue her. After eight years she was eventually moved to Skye. The date of her death is given variously as 1742 and 1746. Dr Johnson is said to have told McLeod, the landlord of St Kilda that if he "would let it be known that he had such a place for naughty ladies, he might make it a very profitable island" (in Boswell's "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides"). This image comes from a collection gifted to Edinburgh Central Library by Dr Isabel F. Grant. The collection includes photographs taken by a number of different photographers. PLACENAME: St Kilda DISTRICT: Harris OLD COUNTY/PARISH: INVERNESS: Harris SOURCE: Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh Central Library COLLECTION: I F Grant Photographic Archive Asset ID: 38826 KEYWORDS: