Field Visit
Date June 2017 - April 2018
Event ID 1042282
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1042282
The farmstead of Skaill is situated on the shore to the S of the graveyard of St Mary’s Church of Westness; it extends for about 100m from N to S and occupies three small drystone enclosures between the pebble storm beach on the W and the improved fields to the E (Fig 1). It comprises at least two periods of occupation. The later one dates to the 19th century and includes two upstanding ruins, a domestic range and a kiln-barn and dairy, and the drystone-walled enclosures; the earlier one is likely to be medieval or post-medieval in date and includes two possible buildings, one of which may be another kiln-barn reduced to footings, with various other platforms and field boundaries defined by terraces and earthen banks. In both phases the main axes are roughly east-west and north-south which suggests a continuity of settlement. At least one earthen bank runs under the drystone dyke of the field on the E of the site to indicate that the settlement once extended further to the E into the field beyond. Geophysical survey by University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) in 2015 indicated ‘earlier boundaries on a different alignment to the present’ ones (Lee et al. 2015, 131) that coincide with many of the earthwork features identified during field survey, and there is a strong anomaly in the field to the E.
