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Note
Date 2 March 2016 - 18 May 2016
Event ID 1044102
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044102
The Broch of Burland stands on a precipitous promontory some 30m above the sea and in addition to the broch three ramparts with external ditches cut across the neck to bar access from the NNW. The broch itself is choked with rubble, but nonetheless in places the outer wall-face stands 3m high, and at the entrance, which opens onto the present cliff-edge on the WNW and displays door-checks and a guard cell, evidence of a complex building history can be seen, with two skins of masonry added to the internal wall-face. The broch appears to stand to one side of the promontory immediately to the rear of the outer defences, but apparently dominates the entrance through the middle of the three outer ramparts. These are conventionally interpreted as outworks to the broch, but they have enclosed a much larger area, now measuring 85m from NNW to SSE by 45m transversely (0.34ha). How much has been lost to the sea down the W flank is unknown, but the curiously oblique course of these defences across the neck of the promontory, might be explained if they had once formed one side of a wider arc. The entrance through the middle of the ramparts on the NNW is complex, probably reflecting several separate periods of construction. The gap in the outermost, where there is no causeway across the broad external ditch, has simple opposed terminals, but the terminals to either side of the gaps in the middle and innermost rampart appear to have been staggered. In 1983 a trench was excavated across the eroding W ends of the outermost and middle ramparts (Carter et al 1995, 464-7), not extending to the then stable innermost, which in the sector W of the entrance is a faced wall 3m in thickness. Both the middle and outer ramparts were also found to be faced with stone, and the middle rampart not only overlay the upper fills of the ditches to either side, but there was also slight evidence that the outer overlay the ditch to its rear. While this does not contradict the interpretation of the outer ramparts as outworks, this longer building history is perhaps evidence that the broch has been inserted into an earlier promontory fort.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC4185
