Barnhill, Jura

Barnhill

Barnhill close up

Barnhill is a solitary farmhouse, remotely situated at grid reference NR705970 in the north of the island of Jura in the Scottish Hebrides. It stands on the site of a larger settlement known in Gaelic since the fifteenth century as Cnoc an t-Sabhail, the English name Barnhill having only been in use since the early twentieth century. The house has become famous as having briefly been the home of the British novelist George Orwell, who lived there intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1950, and who completed his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four while living there. Despite its isolation, Barnhill has in recent years become something of a shrine for Orwellians.