Sharing Heritage
Turf is a great material to build houses, walls and huts. Historically, people in the Scottish Highlands would cut this top layer of ground and use it to create the walls of the bothies or shieling huts that they would stay in over the summer, up in the hills or out on the moors while herding cattle.
The Shieling Project's Talking Turf project worked with children, young people, and adults to celebrate this tradition and experience what it means today.
Working with over 550 people, the project used our funding to deliver over 5,000 hours of learning, as well as building a 100m wall using over 12 tonnes of turf.
The project aimed to be as sustainable as possible and used a number of heritage tools and techniques. For example, a flauchter spade, designed for cutting turf, was used to help preserve the sustainable building material and created a direct link to shieling life.