Note
Date 24 February 2015 - 1 November 2016
Event ID 1044115
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044115
The Broch of Borwick is at first sight the stump of a relatively well-preserved broch standing spectacularly at the tip of a precipitous promontory, but it has not only suffered at the hands of an antiquarian excavator, and the cliff-faces are steadily receding on the N and SW where the wall is collapsing into the abyss. The broch measures about 8.2m in diameter within a wall between 3.5m and 4.6m in thickness and still presents up to 2.4m of neatly coursed outer face to either side of its checked entrance on the SE, which also has a guard chamber. There was evidently a settlement outside the broch, but it is difficult to make any sense of the remains visible today, and nor of any other defences barring access on the landward side. Nevertheless, in the account of his excavations, in which he dug down through a mound over 6m high, William Watt describes an outer wall cutting off the promontory that was 1.8m thick at the base and tapered upwards to about 1m at a height of 2.7m. Confusingly he asserts that this wall was 'founded in the moat' (Watt 1882, 447) 15m to 18m broad that he believed also traversed the approaches to the promontory, of which little coherent trace can now be seen. The enclosed area was roughly triangular, measuring perhaps 50m from NE to SW immediately to the rear of the wall by at least 40m transversely (0.11ha).
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 01 November 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2845
