Longhouse (Building W)
Building W is a tenant farmer’s longhouse or byre dwelling consisting of a byre for the cattle, kitchen, dairy and parlour. The building was part ruin in 1963, with only the roofed byre and parlour wall surviving. The Museum began rebuilding it in 1968.
The original internal layout of the building is different from those in the east of the Township. A single entrance served the byre and the kitchen, presumably incorporating a timber partition, although now they are combined in one room. The dairy and the parlour would have been divided by a further partition, which no longer survives. This would have been accessed by a second doorway through the south-east wall and directly inside the door would have been an internal porch, similar to that in MacCallum’s House (Building A) with entrances to the kitchen, dairy and parlour. The partition between the kitchen and the dairy was subsequently replaced in stone. The modern concrete floors, render and whitewash make dating the different phases of the building almost impossible.
In the 1880s the Campbell family lived in Building W. Mr. Campbell was the skipper of a share fishing boat on Loch Fyne.
To the south-west of Building W are the discontinuous, overgrown foundational remains of three adjoining cells. The closest cell appears to be contemporary with Building W and probably represents a stable or storage barn. The central cell represents the remains of a mill and the end cell was probably a cart shed.
