Stornoway Water Works

Peat cutters photographed in the 1930s

My father got a job digging the peat for the mains water pipe, the trench came in the Barvas Road from Loch Mòr a Starr to Stornoway. There was very little transport at that time and they had a railway track and wagons to remove the peat they dug up. There weren’t even wheelbarrows in those days. 

Then a man called Calum Peem in Steinish started making those beautiful barrows. Later on we could make an attempt at a barrow if we had a bicycle wheel. When the workmen were building the road and finished for the day, they would put the wheel barrow on its back, by the roadside. Quite often when they came back in the morning the wheel was gone. Anybody could make a barrow if they had a wheel!.   

My father worked with people from the Bridge and one day Mr Newlands came to the house, with the first car I ever saw about 1940. The body of it was made from 45-gallon oil drums. It was possible to buy lorry chassis at that time and enterprising people put a body on the chassis. I remember it well, it was a thing of beauty, in those days.  

Rev Angus A MacDonald, Tong 2023