Building and Maintenance Work: Skomer Island Archive
Since the island became a National Nature Reserve in 1959, Skomer has undergone several large-scale building projects such as the building on the Warden's house in North Haven, and the regeneration of the Old Farm buildings for research, volunteer and visitor purposes.
The Skomer Island Heritage Project (2005) enabled the Old Farmhouse to be made safe, and for shelters, interpretation and even a number of windows to be reinstated. This allowed the building to be used by visitors once again. Where the Assistant Warden’s and Volunteers’ accommodation blocks are now was once sheds and pigsties.
The Visitor Centre would have housed machinery such as the grinding and threshing machines. If you look outside the Visitor Centre, behind the buildings, there are two raised horse walks where the farm horse would have walked in circles turning wheels that would have powered this equipment. At one stage there were holes through the walls through which the crank shafts linked horse to machine. The Old Barn, now residential visitor and research accommodation, was a substantial two-story barn for storage and animals.
In addition to these large projects, smaller building and maintenance projects are completed throughout the year, generally as a response to, or preparation against the affects of adverse weather which naturally affect an island location.
