The funeral of the last native resident of the remote Outer Hebridean island of St Kilda took place yesterday.
Rachel Johnson, 93, was just eight years old when the remaining 36 residents were evacuated from the far flung Atlantic archipelago in 1930.
She lived out her last years in a nursing home in Clydebank.
Mrs Johnson was born on St Kilda – which is 41 miles west of the Uists in the main Outer Hebrides – in July 1922 and was a child at the time of the evacuation aboard HMS Harebell on August 29, 1930.
She became the last native of St Kilda left alive following the death in 2013 of 88-year-old man Norman Gillies who was five when the archipelago was evacuated after the remaining residents petitioned the UK government to bring them to the mainland.
Mrs Johnson – who was born Rachel Gillies – had settled in the Clydebank area where she married her late husband Ronald.
She occasionally attended St Kilda reunions over the years – and is featured in a photograph if St Kildans returning to the islands in 1980 to mark the 50th anniversary of the evacuation.
She only return to the islands twice – once for a documentary and once at the invitation of the Army to see how the area had changed.
Mother-of-two Mrs Johnson died peacefully at Mount Pleasant Care Home on Monday.
Her funeral was at Radnor Park Parish Church followed by burial at North Dalnottar Cemetery. She is survived by one of her sons, Ronnie, 61.
Ronnie, also a resident of Clydebank, said: “If you asked her about St Kilda now, she would look at you and smile.
“St Kilda was an important part of her life, but she did not speak much about it.”
