Publication Account
Date 1995
Event ID 1016759
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016759
The broch stands on an open hillside on the edge of a small precipice. On the uphill side it is still some 3.50m high; on the lower side it has collapsed to its foundations. The approach is from the south, where the rectangular walls of a modern sheep pen and dip are built against the broch. Here the fallen stone has been cleared from the broch walls, though piles of rubble remain elsewhere (the large stone piles beside the sheep dip are excavation dumps).
The entrance, now infilled, was through the low part of the wall on the southeast. The inside of the broch has been cleared of stone, but most of the features in the wall have been blocked up to preserve them. A scarcement ledge can be seen in the highest part of the wall. It is only 1.20m above ground level on the uphill side, though as the floor sloped down it would have been some 2.50m above the floor on the other side. Inside the broch, some 4m left of the entrance is a blocked doorway leading to a chamber in the wall on the left, and a stairway going up on the right (the low ' lintel' to this door is only part of the modern blocking). From a landing on the stair a door led out onto a wooden floor above the central court, supported on the scarcement ledge. Beyond this is the stairs went up again. In the highest part of the wall are the remains of a narrow gallery with a few lintel slabs still in position.
Excavation inside the broch showed there had been a central hearth and a ring of posts to support the upper floor. A flat rotary quern was found in one posthole (this, and the few other finds are in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow). Two other postholes by the entrance may have held in inner door. Various phases of reuse after the broch had been partly dismantled were identified.
The excavator has suggested that this broch did not have a hollow wall all round, but had a straight stretch of much thinner, solid wall above the precipice and should therefore be called a 'semibroch'. Since this part of the wall is missing one cannot be too sure of its structure, but there would have been room to build a wide wall all round if about 1.50m of cliff has fallen away since the iron age.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).
