Martin's House

Martin’s House is a longhouse, a type of building lived in by the township’s farming tenants. In longhouses, people and their animals lived under the same roof.

The house includes a byre where cattle would have been kept in winter, which was originally separated from the family’s living area by a timber screen. It also has a peat shed (now roofless) attached to its eastern end.

The byre was home to the township’s last two working horses, Polly and Rona, until 1961. The house is named after Martin Munro, who lived there from his birth in 1858 until he retired and left Auchindrain in 1917. It was the first building at Auchindrain to get a corrugated steel roof, replacing the original thatch. In 1893, Martin Munro was given money by the Argyll Estate to do this - the Duke did not want him to use the much cheaper ‘tar paper’ (roofing felt) as he felt that this would not look good. Within thirty years, all of the buildings still in use at Auchindrain had steel roofs.