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Field Visit
Date 16 June 1921
Event ID 1104377
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1104377
Dun (Beinn nan Dubh-lochan), Ard an t-Sabhail.
About 2 miles north by west of Talisker House is Beinn nan Dubh-lochan near Ard an t-Sabhail, a rugged peak rising to a height of 600 feet above sea-level and overlooking Loch Bracadale, which lies about ¾ of a mile to the north. The hill rises for the last hundred feet in a steep slope crowned by rocky crags almost unscalable for the greater part. On its southern shoulder is a lower peak separated by a narrow hollow from the higher peak, and on a shelf slightly below the summit of the latter, overlooking the lower peak and rising about 50 feet above the intervening hollow, is a ruined broch (Fig. 278). The wall is a heap of fallen stones from the south round the west to the north, but one short section on the north-east shows a height of 6 feet still standing, and on the inside the face of the wall is traceable along the eastern arc. The best preserved part is on the south-east, where a scarcement 9 inches wide is seen 2 feet above the tumbled stones, the wall showing 2 feet more of building above the scarcement. The broch is nearly circular, measuring from 34 feet 7 inches to 36 ½ feet in diameter internally. The wall is 9 to 12 feet thick, and at the entrance, which lies in the east, it is 10 feet 7 inches thick. The north wall of the entrance can be traced, but the opposite side is somewhat broken and obscured. The passage seems to taper from 4 feet 7 inches in width to 3 feet on the inside and there is no trace of checks. There is a roofless oval cell, a guard chamber, about 7 feet in length and 5 feet 2 inches wide in the thickness of the wall to the south of the entrance passage, from which it has been entered, and probably a similar chamber has existed on the north side. Traces of a narrow gallery2 feet 2 inches wide in the interior of the wall on the south are evident, and on the north-east the inner wall, 4 feet thick, of a gallery can be detected.
A gully on the north-east side of the rock has been blocked up by a stone breastwork immediately under the wall of the broch. The foundations of a wall 6 to 8 feet thick leave the broch wall on the south-west and swing round the rocky south-western edge of a terrace for some 75 feet, whence they return eastwards, with a break for an entrance, for about 35 feet, then die out on the rocky face of the hillside. The roadway runs through this entrance, which lies from 52 to 64 feet from the broch, is 12 feet in length, and varies from 4 feet 3 inches to 6 feet 6 inches in width. From the middle of the south-western wall of this defence, another wall, 5 feet in thickness, has run easterly, then northerly, towards the broch, and forms an enclosure about 31 feet in length by about 24 feet in width.
RCAHMS 1928, visited 16 June 1921.
OS map: Skye xxxiii.
