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Field Visit
Date 3 June 1921
Event ID 1105335
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1105335
Dun near Peinduin (Pe an Duin).
About 350 yards west of the road from Portree to Uig, 11 miles from the former place and some 300 yards east by north of the ruined house of Peinduin, in which Flora Macdonald died, is a flat-topped eminence reaching a height of about 100 feet above sea-level. For the greater part of its length on the north-eastern flank it rises in a cliff some 60 feet high and to the south-west is a steep rocky scarp 20 to 30 feet high, while from the south-east it is approached by a gradual rise. The summit, which is of irregular oval shape, is surrounded by the remains of a stone wall built on the edge of the rocks, which varies in width according to its accessibility and encloses an area with axes some 200 feet and 90 feet in length, the longer lying north-west and south-east. At the south-eastern end of the wall, a mass of tumbled stones shows a width of 16 feet and still rises 5 feet above the interior and from 5 to 12 feet above the exterior level. Turning northward along the eastern flank it is reduced to a width of 9½ feet, and when the precipitous part is reached seems again to be diminished to about 5 feet in thickness up to the northern end. Along the western flank, which though steep and rocky, is not inaccessible, the wall now almost entirely gone seems to have been of considerable strength and from 7 to 12 feet in thickness. Across the south-eastern projection of the ridge, some 28 feet from the inner wall, four larger stones set on edge may indicate an outer defence. The entrance to the fort, about 4 feet wide, is near the middle of the east flank. Its approach must have followed a tortuous course from the south-east up the steep rocky slope.
The dun contains a number of interesting structural features within the enceinte. An area 35 feet in diameter and 5 feet in depth, probably a chamber and excavated, which has been surrounded by a stone wall possibly 9 feet in thickness and now a tumbled mass, abuts on the south-western wall. At this part of the wall there were slight indications that it may have contained a narrow gallery within its thickness.
Perhaps the most interesting feature, however, is seen to the east of the large circle. A walled passage almost filled with debris, apparently 3 feet wide and 26 feet in length, connects it with what seems to have been an oval cell corbelled internally, about 18 feet in length built against the inside of the main wall. This is also filled with tumbled stones, but everything points to the passage and chamber having been roofed over, forming a structure like that disclosed in an earth-house. Against the main wall to the south of these structures are indications of one or more hut circles.
RCAHMS 1928, visited 3 June 1921.
OS map: Skye x.
