The humble sheep has, directly and indirectly, had a profound effect on the landscape of the Highlands and the Hebrides, nowhere more than the Uist archipelago. This pattern of sheep dip, or very similar variants, can be found throughout Uist and Benbecula. The sheep would be lifted into the trough and submerged before allowing it to ‘escape’ onto the flat apron, usually enclosed by walls, fencing or hurdles. This would allow excess dip to drip off and run back into the trough, ready to receive the next animal.
This is a sheep dip added on to an earlier fank. The fank itself has been ‘assembled’ from two house ruins an enclosure and other earlier features - recycling at its finest! It sits in a landscape populated by ruins which reach back to the Iron Age at least.
A fine example of the ingenuity and building skills of the farming community on Benbecula. Although most crofts in the township had their own fanks and gathering pens, but the dip, built in the 1970s, was communally used.
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