Tour Scotland travel video clip, with Scottish music, of Easdale, Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Èisdeal, one of the Slate Islands, in the Firth of Lorn. Once a centre of the British slate industry, Easdale had a community of more than 500 working as many as seven quarries, some of which extended to 300 feet below sea level. Easdale slate helped to build major cities of the British Empire and can still be seen on rooftops as far afield as Melbourne in Australia, Nova Scotia and Dunedin in New Zealand and Dublin, Ireland. The great storm of 1850 flooded most of the quarries. Lacking any means of pumping the water away, the slate industry on the island more or less came to an abrupt end. By the early 1960s, the population had dwindled to only four people and the island appeared doomed. Descendants of the original quarrymen, along with others from around the world, have moved to Easdale to create a model of island regeneration
All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.
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