St Kilda

St Kilda is a group of remote islands in the North Atlantic some hundred kilometres west of the Scottish coast, beyond the Outer Hebrides. It comprises Hirta, Soay, Boreray, Dun and Levenish, along with numerous sea stacks among which Stac an Armin and Stac Lee stand out.

Its inscription came in three stages. UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1986 for its natural values, the first Scottish property on the List. In 2004 the property was extended to include the marine environment, practically doubling its area, and a further natural criterion was added. And in 2005 its cultural value was also recognised, making it a mixed property: it is the only one in the United Kingdom with that status and one of the few in the world.

The cliffs hold more than a million seabirds, with the largest colony in Europe and densities exceptional for so small an area, thanks to the variety of ecological niches: gannets, puffins, Leach's storm petrels and fulmars. The last inhabitants were evacuated in 1930, ending some four thousand years of continuous human occupation. They had survived on a subsistence economy based on harvesting seabirds for food, feathers and oil, alongside farming and the Soay sheep, a primitive breed that remains on the islands in a feral state. From that life remain the cleits, thousands of drystone structures used for drying and storage, and the traditional houses of Village Bay.