The Ceilidh House, Skye Museum of Island Life

The Ceilidh House is part of a group of three traditional thatched buildings forming the core of the Skye Museum of Island Life, located at the northeast of the Isle of Skye just south of the A855. The group comprises the Croft House, Byre, and Cottar's or Ceilidh House, arranged in a roughly linear formation running from south to northwest.

The Croft House and Ceilidh House may originate in the late 18th century but appear as they were in the mid-19th century. The Byre dates from the late 19th century. All three are single-storey structures built of rubble stone with thick, slightly battered walls and rounded corners. The piended roofs are thatched in straw and secured with wire netting and stone weights hanging at the eaves. The largest is the three-bay Croft House, which has a central entrance opening to the front (northeast) elevation, flanking windows, and end chimneystacks with clay cans. The Byre and Ceilidh House are slightly lower in height, each with a single entrance and no chimneystacks. The Ceilidh House is built into the hillside with its southeast elevation entirely concealed.

The Croft House interior features whitewashed walls, hessian sacking tacked to the timber roof structure, and stone floors. It comprises an entrance way, a large bedroom to the south, a kitchen to the north, and a smaller bedroom behind the entrance accessed via the kitchen. Rooms are divided by timber panelling. The building retains 19th century fixtures, fittings, and artefacts on display. The Byre and Ceilidh House have exposed roofs with replacement rough timbers, earthen or stone rubble floors, and replacement timber-lined walls, with museum artefacts on display.

The Croft House was occupied until 1958 and first opened to the public in 1965. By 1971, when the site was listed, it was operating as Osmigarry Croft Museum. The museum now includes five additional buildings dating from the 20th and 21st centuries—the Old Smithy (first half of the 20th century, later extended), three replica buildings known as the Shop, Barn, and Weaver's House (built in the later 20th century), and a visitor centre and retail unit added around 2015. These later buildings are excluded from the listing.

These vernacular buildings exemplify regional traditional building methods and materials once prolific across the Highlands and Islands but now extremely rare. The three early buildings retain a significant proportion of their historic fabric, vernacular form, and character, with notable features including thick battered rubble walls with rounded corners and thatched roofs secured with stone weights and netting. They are among a very small number of surviving thatched buildings across Scotland. A 2016 survey by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings found approximately 200 such buildings remaining in Scotland, with around 12 surviving on the Isle of Skye. These structures are important in demonstrating traditional building skills and an earlier way of life.