A pupil at Breakish school in the 1920s

"I started going to Breakish school when I was five years of age. There were about sixty pupils. I walked through the fields of Lower Breakish and afterwards through the fields of Upper Breakish, a distance of half a mile. There was a peat stack on our own croft on the upper part of the croft. This stood us in good stead during the General Strike of 1926, when we had to carry a peat in each day to school in order to heat the classroom. Coal was not available in Skye at that time.

"The teacher in charge, the headmaster, was Ronald MacKenzie from Drumfearn and his assistant teacher was Seonag Challum, of 30 Lower Breakish. The headmaster wore brown plus fours and strutted round the playground and looked more like a farmer than a teacher.

All the teaching was in English when I first went to school. I had very little English and the first few words I had were 'Good morning' and 'It’s going to rain today'."

As told by the late Donald Robertson (Dee), resident of 15 Lower Breakish and later of Stirling, recorded by his son Duncan Robertson and contributed by his great-niece Iseabail Strachan

More information on visiting the area can be found here.