Clachan Smiddy

Clachan Smiddy

Tools from the Smiddy and metal objects made by the blacksmiths are on display in the museum. The November 2013 Object featured the Book of Gaelic Sermons owned by the MacPhersons.  Dugald MacPherson came from Oban to be blacksmith at Clachan in 1870 and he was...

Building Lismore Public Hall 2014

Building Lismore Public Hall 2014

LISDD: 2012.169.   Documents relating to the Building of the Lismore Public Hall, 1928 The Lismore Museum archive contains a wide range of items that have been, and still are, important to the story of Lismore.  Although less appealing visually, they are of great...

World War II Defences

World War II Defences

During World War II Oban Bay was an important base for the assembly of Arctic Convoys and for the War in the Atlantic.  There was a complex set of signaling stations and submarine detectors, but a raid in December 1940 by German bombers, which resulted in the loss of...

Box Brownies

Box Brownies

The camera below is a Six-20 Brownie Model C Box Camera LISDD:2006.65. Brownie Box cameras were first introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1900.  At a price of $1, they made photography available to everyone, and helped to transform lives.  The controls were very simple and...

Bronze Age Archaeology

Bronze Age Archaeology

There is a wealth of Bronze Age archaeology on Lismore (cairns and cists) but we have to look for less obvious traces of the first farmers of the New Stone Age (around 3,500-2,000BC).  Several cup marked stones, including the great broken boulder at Cloichlea, may...

Baligrundle Church

Baligrundle Church

The image above shows the Manse and Church on a postcard dated 1904. Scottish Presbyterians developed schism to a fine art in the 18th and 19th centuries, with groups falling out and rejoining over different points of doctrine but principally about the right of the...

Vernacular Wooden Objects

Vernacular Wooden Objects

Below is LISDD: 2006.126a.  Overall height 875 mm, seat 319 mm x 415/450 mm People on Lismore were very self reliant, producing most of their food and making many of the necessities for life at home.  This attractive vernacular chair, from materials at hand, was made...

Chisit or Fighan

Chisit or Fighan

LISDD:2006.40 Chisit or Fighan (Gaelic) – a wooden, straight sided, tapering bowl, metal bound as in a cask, with perforated base.  Height 165 mm, radius at rim 230 mm. Making cheese has a long history on Lismore.   At the 1638 baron court for Lismore, one of the...

St Kilda mailboat

St Kilda mailboat

LISDD:2006.110 St Kilda mailboats are wooden boxes in the shape of a boat, containing a letter, sometimes sealed into a metal box.  Traditionally, they were attached to a sheep’s bladder as float.  The first was sent out in 1876, as a distress signal, by John Sands, a...

Electricity Comes to Lismore

Electricity Comes to Lismore

Images, objects and documents from the Collections relating to the coming of mains electricity to Lismore in 1970 In spite of the post war ambitions of Tom Johnston to bring progress to the Highlands by electrification, quarter of a century would elapse before the...

Highland Land Law Certificate

Highland Land Law Certificate

Certificate of membership of the Lismore Branch of the Highland Land Law Reform Association issued to John McDonald. Lismore Document Archive LISDD:2007.B2 The Highland Land Reform Association (also known as the Highland Land League and the Crofters’ Party) was...

Boatbuilder’s clamp or tongs

Boatbuilder’s clamp or tongs

The image above is of boatbuilder’s clamp or tongs for fixing the planks of a clinker-built boat. Catalogue number LISDD:2008.134.1 In 1841, there were three families of carpenters on Lismore making clinker dinghies for inshore work: fishing, collecting seaweed,...