St Kilda evacuation 90 years on: ‘They didn’t want to go but knew it was for best’

The 90th anniversary of the day the last residents of St Kilda asked to be evacuated from their island home in the most remote part of Britain is being marked this weekend.

Men on either side of the street forming the St Kilda Parliament in the Village on the island of Hirta, St Kilda.

The last 36 people living in the archipelago 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides were evacuated in August 1930.

They had asked for help three months earlier on 10 May when they wrote a letter to the government saying that life was no longer sustainable.

The letter was passed to the skipper of the first passing trawler to post. Soon afterwards George Henderson, inspector of public health, went to St Kilda and reported back that “swift action” was required.

Julie Hunt, chairwoman of the St Kilda Club conservation body, said the decision to leave the archipelago was difficult but necessary.

She said: “They didn’t want to go but knew it was the best thing to do. They’d just come out of a particularly devastating winter and things had got harder and harder for them. They weren’t self-supporting and able to ‘better themselves’ as the letter says.

“They knew they couldn’t survive but they didn’t know what the other options were. It had got to the point that they were relying on ships coming in and those were becoming less frequent.

“There’s a history of them sending letters out on the mail boats asking for food as they were starving.”

St Kilda has been in the care of the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) since 1957.