1017144 |
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This is one of the best-preserved heel-shaped cairns, probably because it lies in what has become, since the formation of blanket peat, an inhospitable area of small lochs and moorland, although around 3,000 years ago its potential for farming would have been considerably better (colour photograph on p.32). The cairn was built on a low knoll and the kerb can be traced very easi ly, one or more courses high, showing that the lower part of the cairn had a vertical external face (there are tumbled stones beyond the original face); in the centre of the concave facade on the ESE side is a passage leading to a trefoil-shaped burial chamber. Both chamber and passage are now roofless, bur their walls still stand over a metre in height, in places using very large stones. [...] |
1997 |
1017146 |
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This is a very long and arduous walk, and Ronas Hill is often wreathed in mist, but on a clear sunny day the view from the cairn is well worth the effort, as is the cairn itself. Set on the highest point in Shetland (450m OD), its very remoteness has ensured that this cairn has survived the centuries relatively unscathed. Its chamber is still roofed, although much of the covering cairn is now scattered. This was probably a heel-shaped cairn, and the passage, some 2.4m long, opens into a rectangular chamber, 1.7m by 0.9m. The sides and back of the chamber are built with very large slabs, and a single slab forms the roof at a height of just over a metre. Nothing is known of the original contents. [...] |
1997 |
1017003 |
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The substantial remains of this impressive fort have been surrounded by modern Lerwick, but, when it was built in the 17th century, it stood isolated and forbidding on a cliff to the north of the village, with its gun-ports looming over Bressay Sound. Because its fire-power had to be concentrated along its east side, the plan of the fort is less regularly geometric on plan than was normal; it is roughly pentagonal, with a massive seaward wall which is angled rather than straight in order to increase the range of the nine gun-ports massed along it. Each of the five bastions set at the angles of the rest of the fort-wall was also provided with gun-ports, up to a maximum of five in the west bastion. Although the building of the fort began in 1665 (designed by no less a man than John Mylne, Master Mason to King Charles I1), it was burnt by the Dutch in 1673 and lay in disrepair for more than a century until 1782 when it was renovated by the Chief Engineer for North Britain and renamed Fort Charlotte in honour of the Queen. The 18th-century fort had three gates, with the main gate between the west and south-west bastions, and a gun-track led from the north gate out to the Knab headland, the first formal road to be built in Shetland. Within the fort, on three sides of a central parade-ground, were built accommodation blocks. The main west block provided barracks for the garrison, with officers' quarters in the projecting bays at either end, the north block consisted of ground-level kitchen and stores and first-floor accommodation for the Commanding Officer, and the south block held guard-rooms and artillery stores. [...] |
1997 |