Note
Date 4 March 2016 - 18 May 2016
Event ID 1044111
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044111
The Outer Brough of Strandburgh Ness, is an island separated from the mainland of Fetlar by a yawning chasm some 12m wide at its narrowest and 30m deep. Now it is accessible only from the sea, but in times past it must have been connected by a neck towards its WNW end, where the remains of a wall have been recorded along the edge of the cliff. Although not recorded as antiquities, OS surveyors preparing the 1st edition OS 6-inch map (Shetland 1878, sheet 13) evidently landed on the island and depicted a cluster of buildings on its summit and upper E slope, and these were subsequently resurveyed in more detail with a series of other buildings lower down on the E by the OS in 1970. The island measures some 200m in length from E to W by 55m in breadth, sloping down to E and W to either side of a central summit, but whereas the W end and N and S flanks are entirely cliff-girt, on the E the rock outcrops descend more gradually into the sea. Upwards of seventeen stone-founded buildings are shown on the OS plan, forming a series of conjoined clusters. As at Brei Holm, Papa Stour (Atlas No.4197) the Outer Brough was identified by Raymond Lamb as one of a number monastic sites with a cluster of rectangular buildings likely to be of Norse date (1973; 1976), though the rather earlier chronology established there and the possibility that it was once an enclosed promontory should also be borne in mind here, where there is also a wall along the cliff-edge facing the mainland. If a promontory enclosure, the grass-grown upper slopes of its interior currently extend to about 0.74ha, and including the outcrops descending to the sea on the increases it to 0.87ha. Here, however, there are similar buildings on the Inner Brough (Atlas No.4196), a much larger peninsular to which access at the neck is barred by a substantial bank.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC4195
