Calum

Filed Under: In The Workshop

This video is part of a wee “In The Workshop“ series I’ve been putting together, starting with my previous “Paramo Vise” restoration. This time, I thought it would be fun to look at some ‘microhistory’- the history of a nail and, more specifically, a nail from the distillery drawn from wood that has now been re-used in Fiona’s new jewellery workshop:

While dad has been busy building this place for the place year or so, it’s got me interested a whole number of different things, thinking about the history of structures, the idea of creating something new out of something old and breathing new life into old things. The workshop itself is actually our old garden shed from childhood house in Inverarish, and dad built in the 90s as a toolshed/workshop. I think you can actually see him building it in far right of this home video from 1992 (the year I was born!):

We moved from there in 2000, but back in 2015 we were offered the shed by the new owners, Lillian, as she was building her own workshop in its place. Rather than deconstructing it, dad had the bright idea to move it– literally rolling it onto a trailer and towing it to where it is now next to the garage of the house.

Amazingly, we got it in place and over the course of the last couple of years, we’ve turned it into the workshop. I’ve always loved this idea of breathing life into something old, using old things and giving them a new life and a new purpose- and this shed is just a great example of that, not only a piece of our family history, taken from our old house where we grew up but also the shared experience and the mad story of moving this shed and the new life it’s taken on.

What I’m really interested in though is another piece of heritage contained within in this shed, a timber used in the new porch way and more specifically what’s hammered into said beam.

This timber once came from Borodale House, one of the old estate buildings on Raasay that now in fact, much like the jewellery workshop, surrounded by something new- the multi-million-pound scotch whisky distillery. Like any build on the islands during the stripping out and restoration, the discarded, unwanted pieces from the renovation found new homes around the island as building materials.

Who really takes much time to think about nails, really? Well, joiners and woodworkers I’m sure but also somewhat surprisingly, historians and archaeologists. Nails and building materials can be one of the most important clues often in dating or identification of a structure or archaeological site, whether it be a buildings, walls, shipwrecks, tools or even coffins and of course oftentimes metal, brass or copper nails far outlast the wood that they once fastened into. The history of ‘the nail’ culturally- the way they were made, the preciousness of them, the effects they had on building and the economy is wide-reaching and important. In many cases the importance of nails, their inherent value or the scarcity of them is tied to the way they were made and tracks in a very interesting way with the development of other technology- machinary, building practices,  the industrial revolution and more. The availability of materials such as the simple nail can and has had massive consequences on the civilisation that we live in.

The nail that I’m extracting from this off cut of the beam is probably the first time in well over one hundred years that it’s seen any light and was hammered into this piece of wood back when the building was probably first constructed in 1877. It was a different century a completely different world and this nail represented a relaivity new technological advancement in the nail, the biggest leap that it had taken thousands of years.

It was this jumping off point that led me down the route of exploring the importance of nails – from the ancient Romans to pioneering American frontiersman. I hope you enjoy the video!