13/05/2026
Why is it called The Pitmiddle Hut? Well, it’s situated meters from the abandoned village of Pitmiddle, however, the site would have originally been part of the Pitmiddle pendicles (small pieces of land associated with each house/smallholdings). The outlines of some of the houses in Pitmiddle Village can still be seen- and explored today- with currant bushes still found in their gardens. Amazingly, the village was inhabited until 1938- however, numbers of residents had been dwindling up until then due to it being a particularly challenging place to live- above the snow line, very few ways to make money, farming at that small scale increasingly unviable, and the majority of jobs being located in or nearer to cities. A slow and sad end to a truly beautiful little village. Luckily for us… technology has improved enough to ensure we could build a cosy, solar powered hut with a flushing toilet and running drinking water! Imagine what the people of Pitmiddle would think if they could see it. The original houses of Pitmiddle would have been earth, later replaced by the stone buildings you can only just see today - as opposed to our tin clad, wood fibre insulated hut. At that point, Pitmiddle was much larger than the small farm of Guardswell, what a change in less than 100 years.
