Shunning modernity, living off the land, and eating seabirds to survive – some might think that all sounds a bit romantic.

But for the Britons of St Kilda, that way of life had become too much. 

On August 29, 1930 – precisely 95 years ago today – the final 36 inhabitants of the remote archipelago in the Outer Hebrides departed their homes permanently.

As evocative photographs depict, they loaded their belongings onto boats, together with the sheep and cattle that had sustained them and their forebears for generations.

According to the Daily Mail’s report at the time, the Gaelic-speaking islanders had never encountered a train or a tram, but they were now about to experience the conveniences of modern life.

Their departure to the Scottish mainland marked the end of a 4,000-year chapter of human habitation on the tiny island group.

Furthermore, as a letter to the then secretary of state for Scotland explained, the evacuation was necessary because winter was approaching, and it was unlikely they would have enough men to ‘tend the sheep, do the weaving and look after the general welfare of the widows.’

The islanders had asked for help on May 10, 1930. 

Inhabitants on the island of St Kilda, in the Outer Hebrides, pose for a photograph in 1926

Smiling St Kilda residents carry their belongings on their back as they leave for the final time 

Their letter was given to the captain of the first passing trawler to mail, and soon after, George Henderson, an inspector of public health, visited St Kilda and reported back that ‘swift action’ was needed to evacuate the residents.

But the archipelago was not left without life. Instead, the island’s many birds just lost their human neighbours.

Today, St Kilda, which has been in the care of the National Trust for Scotland since 1957, is home to the UK’s largest colony of Atlantic puffins.

The island group is also the UK’s only dual Unesco World Heritage Site – for natural and cultural heritage.

St Kilda comprises five islands – Hirta (the main island), Soay, Boreray, Dun, and Levenish – in the North Atlantic, located 100 miles off the west coast of Scotland.

There was no saint called Kilda. 

Instead, the islands’ name is thought to derive from the Old Norse word skildir (shields), a reference to their appearance from a distance. 

Perhaps because of their willingness to be isolated from modern life on the mainland, the islanders became a tourist attraction in the late Victorian era.

The evacuation of St Kilda. The last residents left on August 29, 1930

The letter the islanders sent to the secretary of state for Scotland in May 1930

Intrepid sightseers made the rough crossing from the mainland to see them up close.

The islanders survived by keeping sheep and cattle and growing food crops.

A mainstay of their diet was seabirds, particularly puffins and gannets; although hunting them proved precarious.

Another key part of life was their small church, which hosted three services on a Sunday.   

People on St Kilda developed an unusual way to communicate with the outside world from their remote island home – by launching post into the sea in small waterproof vessels.

Living on an archipelago 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides, the only way islanders could make contact with other communities was by asking boats that called there in the summer months to carry their post and pass it on.

Journalist John Sands came up with the idea of creating mailboats in the 1870s when he became stranded there.

A mailboat that he launched in 1877 was found in Birsay in Orkney nine days later, and a boat was sent to rescue Sands and nine shipwrecked Austrian sailors who were also marooned on St Kilda.

A boy selling eggs in St Kilda as residents leave for the last time, 1930

A St Kilda native selling sea bird eggs during the evacuation of the island

Natives of St Kilda seen in a small boat as they head towards the steamer that would take them to the mainland

The evacuation of St Kilda. Sheep are seen being taken off the island

Among the evacuees were six cows who had to swim out from the jetty to the steamer that ferried them to safety

St Kilda residents pictured with their belongings as they prepare to leave the island

Mailboats helped bring aid a few years later in September 1885 when the islanders were facing starvation after their food stores were left ruined following a severe storm.

Alexander Gillies Ferguson, a 14-year-old schoolboy, had heard of the mailboats developed by Sands and launched five vessels which contained messages asking for help.

One of the boats soon arrived in Gallan Head, Lewis, and help was sent to the islanders.

Over the decades, St Kildans continued to use mailboats to make contact with the outside world – and while some reached the Scottish mainland others floated as far as Iceland, Denmark and Norway.

The mailboats were made from a range of materials with the letters placed in a waterproof container which could be a tin or a bottle, and attached to something that would float such as a piece of wood or a buoy which may have been made from an inflated sheepskin bag.

In their plea for help to leave in 1930, the islanders wrote: ‘For some years the manpower has been decreasing. Now the total population of the island is reduced to 36. 

‘Several men out of this number have definitely made up our minds to go away this year to such employment on the mainland.

‘This will really cause a crisis as the present number are hardly sufficient to carry on the necessary work of the place.

Residents of St Kilda pose for a photograph along one of the island’s cobbled streets

Residents on St Kilda are seen together, September 1926

Three generations of women on the archipelago of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides, 1880

Visitors to St Kilda watch as a resident demonstrates the art of spinning, 1926

Three St Kilda fowlers pose for a photograph. The image was turned into a postcard

St Kilda inhabitants, including a young child and baby, are seen in the late 19th century

A St Kilda resident sits at her sewing machine

Former residents of St Kilda returning in the 1980s. The last surviving resident, Rachel Johnson,died in 2016 aged 93

‘These men are the mainstay of the island at present, as they tend the sheep, do the weaving and look after the general welfare of the widows.

‘Should they leave the conditions of the rest of the community would be such that it would be impossible for us to remain on the island another winter.’

The population decline began after the First World War, when most of the younger men left.

The population fell from 73 in 1920 to 37 in 1928. There was an influenza outbreak on the island in 1926 that killed four men.

That tragedy was followed by a series of crop failures.

Experts at Aberdeen University studied the soil where islanders had been growing their crops. 

A recent photo of what was once the main street of St Kilda. Some of the cottages have been restored

A recent image of St Kilda. The island is now uninhabited

St Kilda has been in the care of the National Trust for Scotland since 1957

They found that metallic pollutants had contaminated the ground. It is believed the pollutants leaked into the soil from the carcasses of seabirds.

The last tragedy before evacuation came in January 1930, when young woman Mary Gillies died from appendicitis. 

At the time of the evacuation, the island group was owned by Sir Reginald MacLeod,  The politician and courtier was chief of the historic Clan MacLeod.

He sold St Kilda to Lord Dumfries, later Marquess of Bute, in 1931. 

That same year, it was reported that St Kilda had been raided by ‘pirates’.

The crew of a foreign trawler was said to have stolen anything of value from homes and farm buildings.

The report in the Daily Mail added: ‘Locked doors and windows were smashed, and there was wanton destruction everywhere.’ 

Today, sightseers can visit St Kilda via a boats that departs daily from the village of Leverburgh in the Outer Hebrides.