Field Visit

Date 4 August 1931

Event ID 1129987

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1129987

RCAHMS Inventory: Orkney and Shetland

Broch, Loch of Houlland, Esha Ness.

This broch occupies practically the whole of a small low-lying promontory which juts out from the N.W. into the Loch of Houlland. The site has been considerably disturbed, and the structure is largely buried under its own debris. Here and there, however, particularly on the N. and N.E., the wall still survives to a height of approximately 12 ft ., although only the upper 7 ft. of it stand clear of the vegetation. The outer face shows very little batter, while most of the inner face is concealed by the stones that have fallen into the interior. The over-all diameter is 57 ft. and the wall is 15 ft. thick. The entrance, which is at the W.S.W., is 3 ft. wide at the mouth but narrows to 2 ft. 10 in. at the other end. On the right is the usual cell or "guard-chamber," now so much choked with fallen material that its precise dimensions could not be ascertained. There are also fragmentary indications of a gallery at the N. and E., but no other constructional features are at present visible.

There are some scattered traces of prehistoric outbuildings in front of the entrance and again at the neck of the peninsula on the N. side, where, moreover, no fewer than three lines of defence, not all of them perhaps contemporary with the broch itself, seem to have been drawn across the isthmus at irregular intervals to guard the approach.* The innermost, which is approximately 2 ft. high, is a bank faced on the outside with stone, while the other two consist of large stones set edge to edge. The outermost may originally have been a rudely built wall with a base course of very large stones, in some cases as much as 2 or 3 ft.in height. An entrance passage, 5 ft. wide, runs obliquely through the two outer lines and over the inner bank. There appears also to have been a rough wall round the margin of the promontory close to the water's edge.

At the S. extremity of the headland the broch site is connected with an adjacent island in the loch by a partially submerged causeway, some 8 or 9 ft. broad, and the island is, in turn, connected with the W. shore of the loch by another causeway, which runs off in a direction slightly to N. of W. This latter causeway, too, is partially submerged and is now much broken and scattered.

RCAHMS 1946, visited 4 August 1931.

OS 6" map, Shetland, 2nd ed. (1900)

*Low (Tour, p. 136) describes it as ‘fortified towards the land with a very thick rampart of vast stones’.