Old workers’ cottages to be restored

TWO Caithness cottages – the last surviving homes of workers from the county’s historic flagstone quarrying industry – are to be restored by one of the Prince of Wales’s leading charities.

The Prince’s Regeneration Trust has announced that it has started work on the repair and conversion of the two cottages, built from the local flagstone, in the village of Castletown.

The homes, known as “The Backies” in the village’s Butcher’s Lane, were built in the 1890s for workers employed in a once thriving industry in which flagstones from Castletown were exported as far as South America, the US, Australia and New Zealand.

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The walls, roof and dykes of each of the cottages have been hewn from the local stone and remain largely unaltered since the day they were built.

The Backies were last inhabited in the 1950s and had lain derelict until purchased by the Prince’s Regeneration Trust in late 2009.