Stroma, Caithness, Highland - from John O'Groats - 1970s Colourmaster postcard

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Sunset over the Isle of Stroma from John O'Groats, Caithness, Highland, Scotland
• Publisher:  Colourmaster International [Photo Precision Ltd] (PT35641)
• Postally used:  yes
• Stamp:  12&half light green Scottish regional
• Postmark(s):  Thurso 1982
• Sent to:  Harley Street, London W1
• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Stroma is an island off the northern coast of the Scottish mainland. It is the most southerly of the islands in the Pentland Firth between the Orkney Islands and Caithness. The name is from the Old Norse Straumr-øy meaning ""island in the [tidal] stream"".^[1]

The low-lying island was inhabited from prehistoric times to 1962, when the last of its permanent inhabitants abandoned it for new homes on the mainland. Ancient stone structures on the islands testify to its earliest occupants, while a Norse presence around 900–1,000 years ago is recorded in the Orkneyinga Saga. Stroma has been united politically with the mainland region of Caithness since at least the 15th century. Although it lies only a few miles off the Scottish coast, the savage weather and ferociously strong tides of the Pentland Firth meant that the island's inhabitants were very isolated. They were largely self-sufficient, by necessity, trading agricultural produce and fish with the mainlanders.

Most of the islanders were fishermen and crofters, with some also working as maritime pilots to guide vessels through the treacherous waters of the Pentland Firth. The tides and currents meant that shipwrecks were frequent—the most recent occurring as recently as 1993—and salvage provided an additional though often illegal supplement to the islanders' incomes. A lighthouse was built on Stroma in 1890 and still operates today under automation.

Stroma is now abandoned, with the houses of its former inhabitants unoccupied and falling into ruin. Its population fell gradually through the first half of the 20th century as inhabitants drifted away to seek better economic opportunities elsewhere, as economic problems and Stroma's isolation made life on the island increasingly unsupportable. From an all-time peak of 375 people in 1901, the population fell to just 12 by 1961 and the last islanders left at the end of the following year. The island is now owned by one of its former inhabitants, who uses it to graze the cattle and sheep which are now its only occupants.

Stroma is located in the Pentland Firth about 2 miles (3.2 km) north-west of John o'Groats on the mainland, dividing the firth into two channels (the Inner Sound to the south, and the Outer Sound to the north). It is mostly low-lying and flat, covering an area of around 375 hectares (930 acres) and rising to a height of 53 m (174 ft) at Cairn Hill in the island's south-east. It is oriented in a north-south direction, measuring about 2 miles (3.2 km) long by 1 mile (1.6 km) wide.^[1]

The island is ringed by cliffs, varying in height from around 33 m (108 ft) on the west coast to low cliffs with a narrow rocky foreshore elsewhere.^[6] The eastern side of the island has a pronounced easterly or south-easterly dip which increases from around 3 degrees in the centre of the island to about 30 degrees on the east coast.^[7] The bedrock of the island consists of flat layers of weathered Middle Old Red Sandstone, known as Rousay flags.^[1] A six-foot band of the fine-grained stone used to be quarried on a small scale for use on the mainland as roofing material. It is similar in composition to the Mey Beds on the mainland, though in some places on Stroma it is replaced by beds of angular and rounded masses of sandstone in a nodular matrix, similar to the Ackergill Beds in Caithness. Only fragmentary fossil remains have been found; these include specimens of the extinct Devonian fish Dipterus and Coccosteus.^[7]

Stroma is bisected by a fault which runs in a north-south direction through its centre,^[1] intersected by another fault running in an east-north-east direction across the north of the island.^[7] The soil on either side of the fault line is significantly different; the eastern and southern parts of Stroma are covered by fertile clay fed by bedrock minerals, while less fertile boggy ground predominates on the west side.^[8]

The heavily indented coastline has a circumference of about 7 miles (11 km),^[9] indented by numerous geos or inlets produced by the cliffs being eroded along fault lines by the sea.^[8] A partially collapsed sea cave called the Gloup is located in the north-west of the island. This feature is a deep rocky pit, filled with sea water.^[1] It is located at the junction of the two fault lines and is connected by the sea by a subterranean passage 165 yd (151 m) long, created by erosion along the east-north-east fault.^[7] It is said to have been used by islanders for smuggling and to conceal illegal distilling from HM Customs and Excise by hiding the stills and alcohol in a cave within the Gloup, called ""the Malt Barn"", which was only accessible at low tide.^[10][11]

The flora and fauna of Stroma is similar to that of the mainland. The island is entirely treeless, its vegetation consisting primarily of grasses, heather and small flowers. Seals are plentiful along its shores and are sometimes found inland during the breeding season, while the western cliffs are the site of colonies of terns, guillemots, fulmars and eider ducks.^[8]

Stroma's population fell precipitously through the first half of the 20th century, leading eventually to the island's final abandonment at the end of the 1950s. There was no single cause that precipitated the collapse of Stroma's population. Living conditions on the island were always basic; there was no running water or electricity, while gas only arrived in the 1950s, which contrasted poorly with the improvements being made on the mainland.^[33] The fishing deteriorated after the First World War and crofting became an increasingly difficult way to make a living.^[46] The island was relatively overpopulated; by 1901 the population was nearly twice that of sixty years previously and there was little spare land left for farming. Families of six to eight children were common but there was simply not enough work for all, so the eldest often left for the mainland or emigrated to Canada or the United States to find work. The lack of a proper harbour meant that the islanders could not make use of larger boats or develop a modern fishery.^[47] Young people started moving away to seek better-paying opportunities elsewhere, eventually followed by their parents.^[10]

Both of the World Wars had a major impact on Stroma, which was only a dozen miles from the Royal Navy's chief base at Scapa Flow in Orkney. Six islanders died in each of the World Wars; the names of all twelve are inscribed on the island's war memorial, and during the Second World War as much as a quarter of the population was on war service.^[34] Adding to the island's economic problems, the introduction of the 11-plus exam from 1944 meant that all children over the age of 12 had to leave Stroma to complete their education at the secondary school in Wick. Because they could not commute between the island and Wick, they had to attend school as boarders, which incurred additional expenses for their parents.^[47]

Two other factors have often been cited in Stroma's depopulation: the building of the nuclear power station at nearby Dounreay in the 1950s, which created many new jobs on the mainland, and the construction of a harbour on Stroma in the same decade on which many islanders were employed. Although it has been claimed that this gave the islanders the incentive (and the means) to leave, local historian Donald A. Young points out that of islanders who left after 1945, only one went directly from Stroma to Dounreay. Most of the rest either continued fishing or carried on crofting on the mainland, while others found alternative jobs. Some ex-islanders eventually found jobs at Dounreay, but they had already moved to the mainland for work or education.^[11]

The Sinclairs of Mey sold their portion of the island to Colonel F.B. Imbert-Terry in 1929, who sold it in turn to John Hoyland, an umbrella manufacturer from Yorkshire, in 1947. He also acquired the remaining island estate of the Sinclairs of Freswick, uniting Stroma for a reported cost of £4,000. His tenure coincided with the final collapse of the island's population. As the tenants left, Hoyland put Stroma on the market but found no buyers.^[48] A Caithness councilman suggested various schemes for Stroma, including establishing a nudist colony and using it as a site for a crematorium, but the council rejected suggestions that it should take on responsibility for the island.^[49] As the population left, the local economy disintegrated; there were no longer enough able-bodied men to man the fishing boats and the remaining facilities on the island were closed down for lack of custom. The last store on the island, the Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society shop, closed in 1956. Only three families numbering 16 people were left by 1957; that year, the island's school closed, by which time it only had two pupils. The Post Office closed in 1958 when the family which operated it left for the mainland.^[50]

In the summer of 1958, Hoyland prompted controversy by offering the island to the American TV quiz show ""Bid and Buy"" as a prize.^[48] After an outcry on both sides of the Atlantic, the show's producers settled for offering a car instead.^[51] In December 1960, he sold Stroma to James Simpson, an islander whose family had moved to farm on the mainland near the Castle of Mey in 1943.^[52] Simpson had not originally intended to buy the island but happened to be talking about it with a lawyer: ""I said, 'I see Stroma was sold last week, and it's not sold this week. Is it on the market?' 'Yes,' he said, 'Stroma's for sale.' I said, ""What kind of money?"" So he told me what kind of money, and there and then, the lawyer wrote that I, James Simpson, offered to buy the island of Stroma at a certain figure, and I signed my name at the end of it."" His wife was not enthusiastic about the purchase: ""Lena nearly flew at me for being so stupid. She says, 'Stroma? What on earth are you going to do with an island?'"".^[48] He was successful in his bid and used the island to graze his animals, repopulating it with around 200 sheep and 30 cattle.^[46]

By this time, the five-member Manson family had become the last native inhabitants of Stroma, ""now liv[ing] in a silent community of empty houses, an empty church and an empty school.""^[53] Although the head of the family, Andrew Manson, called the island ""a paradise in summer"" and a place where he was ""free of outside distractions and watching my sons growing from boyhood to manhood – teaching them to live like men, to be dependent on no one,"" it was a bleak life for the women, who had applied for a council house at Scrabster, near Thurso.^[46] The Mansons finally left Stroma on 6 December 1962, bringing to an end thousands of years of permanent habitation on the island.^[54]

Stroma is now entirely deserted by humans; its only permanent inhabitants now are the seals, birds and sheep that live on the island. The church, school and old croft houses stand derelict, with many having fallen into ruin.^[1] Bella Bathurst, visiting the island in the early 2010s, described the scene:

The houses along the main road down the spine of the island seem to have rotted at different rates. Those crofts, which have somehow managed to keep their glazing and their roof—slates, are in much better condition than the others. In some, the furniture is still laid out as if only recently abandoned: iron bedsteads with mattresses, tables, armchairs, cupboards full of boots and bottles, everything arranged with the same care and compaction as it would be on a boat. But most crofts have already lost the war with the weather. As soon as the tiles go, the damp begins to sidle into the mortaring; within a couple of years all that is left are a few bony ribs and the stark gable ends.^[55]

Inside some of the houses, Bathurst writes, everyday objects still remain where they were left decades ago; ""the bed and the limed matchboard ceiling are intact, untouched even by the damp. The kitchen table still stands in the parlour and a framed and fading photograph gazes out from the top of the mantelpiece."" In another house seen 20 years earlier by Leslie Thomas, ""was a rank of family photographs, shades in Victorian dress staring out forever into a room now desolate and holed, but which had once held the life of a warm family.""^[56] Elsewhere, the books remain ""dusty but tidy"" in the abandoned school, and the church still contains its pulpit, ""dumb and hung with ragged red tassles"" with prayer books ""left to be trampled upon by heathen sheep and nibbled by rabbits and rats."" In the former post office, forms and licence applications and a bottle of dried ink still stand on the counter, while in a back room stands ""a nice dresser, upon which [stands] a teapot and a jug and some sheet music: 'Red Sails in the Sunset', 'The General's Fast Asleep' and 'You Can't Do That There 'Ere.' Nobody on Stroma will ever sing those songs now.""^[57]

Bathurst and Thomas express contrasting views on the significance of Stroma's abandonment. Thomas regards it as a tragedy: ""Of all the out-of-the-way places I have known, this was the saddest. It seemed as though its life had been ended in a fit of pique."" ^[57] To Bathurst, however, ""it is tempting to see Stroma's abandonment as the result of some appalling trauma. Abandonment is always taken as a sign of failure, a collective death ... But Stroma does not feel sad. True, there is sorrow in seeing the once meticulous vegetable patches turned over to weeds, or wondering how many more winters the box beds will stand before they start to rot. But that isn't the whole story. What is interesting about Stroma is not the fact of its abandonment, but the tale of its past.""^[58]

type=printed postcards

theme=topographical: british

sub-theme=scotland

county/ country=caithness

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=posted