Publication Account
Date 2002
Event ID 1039124
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1039124
HU42 6 MOUSA
HU 457237
...continued from Part 1 (Event ID 575393).
3. Discussion
The uniqueness of the broch of Mousa in terms of its small size, fine state of preservation and relative massiveness of its wall was noted by me in 1965 [8; 00 ff.]; it was suggested then that these special features meant that Mousa is the best built of all known brochs and that this may partly account for its excellent state of preservation.
Fojut has reviewed again the size, proportions and architecture of Mousa and shown that it is an exceptional building even in a Shetland context [9]. Using new data collected in the field, he notes that the wall percentage of Mousa (64.5%) is so much greater than those of its Shetland neighbours that it significantly alters the mean of that island group. On the reasonable assumption that the greater the relative massiveness of the wall base of a broch, the greater its original height, Mousa probably also stood apart from its neighbours in the Iron Age; if it was not actually the tallest, then it was certainly the tallest and most stable. Using the same kind of criteria Mousa is also found to be as atypical of Scottish brochs as a whole as of Shetland ones. Fojut also argues that the design of the intra-mural stair of Mousa may not be typical of other brochs.
Despite this uniqueness, and despite Fojut's curious question in his title "Is Mousa a Broch?" ('what else can it be?', one might ask), the tower on Mousa island can reasonably be described as the most perfectly designed hollow-walled broch of which we have detailed knowledge. It differs in detail from the rest -- and its architect seems to have been unusually inspired over some of these details -- but its basic design and architecture are in the standard broch pattern.
The conclusion drawn here from the fact that the roof of the stair-foot cell intrudes into the basal gallery has never been drawn before but it does seem to confirm in a decisive way the one that could already be drawn from the awkwardness of access to the galleries from the stair -- that the brochs' intra-mural galleries were primarily a structural feature and were not for living in or for storage.
Sources: 1. OS card HU 42 SE 1: 2. Low 1879, 181-83: 3. Hibbert 1822, 251-55: 4. Dryden 1890, 207-11: 5. Paterson 1922: 6. RCAHMS 1946, vol. 3, no. 1206, 48-55, figs. 531-41 and pls. 17 and 18: 7. Cruden 1951: 8. MacKie 1965: 9. Fojut 1981: 10. Anderson 1883: 11. Hamilton 1968. 12. Sibbald 1829, 42.
E W MacKie 2002
