Field Visit

Date 25 June 1931

Event ID 1130560

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1130560

RCAHMS Inventory: Orkney and Shetland

Broch, Culswick.

Despite great dilapidation, this broch (Fig. 590) is still one of the most impressive spectacles of the kind in Shetland, particularly as viewed from the sea. Perched upon the cliffs on the S. side of the entrance to Gruting Voe, it overlooks a wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Although the main structure is much encumbered with fallen material, its general outline can be clearly followed, the over-all diameter being 53 ft. The wall has had an average thickness of some 14 ft., and in some places its outer face, which has the usual batter, is still as much as 15 ft. high. In Low's time (1774) it seems to have been 8 ft. higher (1). Outside, at a distance varying from 11 to 25 ft., there has been a wall or a stone revetted rampart, 13 ft. 6 in. thick. Only the remains of its inner and outer faces are visible, rising here and there to a height of 6 ft. 6 in. The area between the broch and the outer defence is covered with fallen stones, some of which at least appear to be from ‘outbuildings’.

The doorway, much blocked with debris, is on the E, and its slightly converging jambs are surmounted by a massive triangular lintel (Fig. 589). The passage to which it gives access is 14 ft . 6 in. long and 3 ft . wide, and is checked on both sides for a door about midway in its length. On the right or N. side of its inner half is a chamber, not now accessible but originally entered from the courtyard. Above its inner end, and also above the entrance to the chamber, are rectangular openings in the inner face of the main wall, while at four points corbel-stones project, as at Mousa, at what must be from 9 to 10 ft. above floor-level. There are indications of a gallery or galleries on the NW and NE.

RCAHMS 1946, visited 25 June 1931.

(1) Tour, p.88

OS 6" map, Shetland, 2nd ed., (1903).