About 400 years ago German merchants of the Hanseatic League built bods along the coast of Shetland. They were used as trading posts to trade salt, pottery, fish, wool.
Jan & Pete's house's first recording of existence is 1668 when Adolph Westermann of Germany owned it. It had ownership before that but the details are unknown. The house changed hands many times & was taken over by a laird in the early 1700's. Around 1860 John Anderson bought the Bod & built Hillswick House alongside the bod. His wife Euphemia had 11 children there. He was a very wealthy and influential man who employed 130 people who worked at the house making coffins, ran a shop, a post office, a coopersmith, making barrels, traded booze, and dealt in fishing (herring). Later the house was a knitting factory & then a pub. It was still a pub when Jan took it over. She ran it as a pub for many years until it was converted into a vegetarian cafe for 12-13 years and is now a charity shop for the wildlife sanctuary.
Apparently John Anderson was nice to his large family, but not very nice to the workers. Workers stayed in the basement of the house in rooms with doors only about 4 foot high...they may have stayed in the croft behind the house also.
Out front of the house near the pier that was there, they used to bring in herring fish and dry them out there. There's a lot more to the history but I didn't jot down all the facts...just know that it goes WAY back in time!
Location:Hillswick
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