Two weeks from today, on Sunday, 26th August, from 10.00am to 5.00pm, Auchindrain is hosting a day of traditional music and crafts.
Look forward to the Inveraray Pipe Band, fresh from the World Pipe Band Championships; Waulking the Weave with Gaelic Singing fron the renowned and now familiar Inverclyde Gaelic Waulkers; butter churning with Karol Chodorowski; Competitions – you’ll have to be there to find out what surprises are in store here; guided tours of the Auchindrain township – seeing its revived life for yourself; and, as you like it, hot food and great coffee from the tearoom.
Part of the National Collections of Scotland as the last preserved highland farm township, Auchindrain has proved a mythical shape changer, performing a successful transition into a new role as an embedded part of the life of its local communities in mid Argyll and north Cowal.
Evidence of its regeneration can be seen even from passing traffic – with dry stone dyking renewed and a complete barn rebuilt by the West of Scotland Dry Stone Dyking Association and re-roofed.
The land is becoming fertile again with children from the primary schools in Minard, Furnace and Inveraray growing vegetables in their own rigs; and Karol Chodorowski from the museum’s team, planting produce in the kail yard at Bel Pol’s house in the township.
The new tearoom in the reception building – which also hosts art exhibitions (with the second of a series from artists’ collective, Artmap Argyll, hanging at the moment) – with its great coffee, home baking and tasty hot snacks, has proved a get together place for residents and visitors alike. Be assured it will be on red alert on Sunday 26th August.
This regeneration – reinvention – of Auchindrain has come into being under its Development Director Bob Clark and his team.
The team at Auchindrain has recently been extended by two interns frm Oxford University, both historians, one, Helen Morozovska, an undergraduate about to enter her second year and the other, Becky Noble, a postgraduate.
Becky will be here for a few more months ans is working on a major project around the food that would traditionally have have kept body and soul together for the crofters at Auchindrain.
Becky and Helen covered for us the opening of the Kit and Caboodle exhibition at Campbeltown museum, on the history of local football. We will shortly be publishing an article on their internship – whose success is delighting both Oxford University and Auchindrain – and on the work Becky is continuing to do here.
She is writing an article on the coming event on Sunday 26th which will be published in advance of the event.
