Britain's tallest sea stack, 197 metres of rock off Boreray in St Kilda, where the last great auk in Britain was killed
Access uncleara sea stack with no landing — seen from day boat trips out of Harris or Skye
Stac an Armin is the tallest sea stack in Britain, a 197-metre tower of rock standing about 400 metres north of Boreray in the St Kilda archipelago, with Stac Lee under 2 km to the south-west. The Gaelic name, Stac an Àrmainn, means the stack of the warrior. The channel between it and Boreray is so strewn with rocks that boats keep well clear, and like Stac Lee it only makes the Marilyn hill list because the sea supplies the drop.
The St Kildans treated it as a larder. They climbed it for gannets, puffins and eggs, and built 78 small stone storehouses, called cleits, on its slopes to dry and keep the birds, along with a bothy to sleep in. In August 1727 a party of three men and eight boys from Hirta was landed here for the fowling and then stranded for nine months. Smallpox had broken out on Hirta, and no boat came for them until the following May.
It’s also where the last great auk seen in Britain died. Around 1840, three islanders caught one of the big flightless seabirds on the stack and kept it tied up for three days. When a storm blew up, they took the bird’s strange cries for witchcraft and beat it to death. The last confirmed pair anywhere in the world was killed on Eldey, off Iceland, in 1844.
Today the gannets have it to themselves. Stac an Armin, Stac Lee and Boreray share the world’s largest gannet colony, and landing needs the National Trust for Scotland’s permission, so for everyone else the view is from a day boat out of Harris or Skye, weather permitting.
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