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Note
Date 13 September 2022
Event ID 1145781
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1145781
NM71SE 25 75287 10089
With the similar remains at Black Mill Bay, the slate quarries and associated settlement at Balure, on the E coast of Lung, represent the most compelling evidence for 18th century slate quarrying in the island. The remains are evident on visualisations derived from Airborne Laser Scanning data and they extend along the coast for a distance of at least 250m and extend from the coastline by up to 50m.
The workings at the N end consist of relatively small and irregular openings (less than 20m in their greatest dimension), generally worked in from the coastal exposures towards the raised beach cliff. The S half of the quarry appears to have been worked more consistently leaving a terrace about 30m in breadth and a band of spoil along the seaward edge. Upon this terrace, there are a series of buildings and garden enclosures, some of which presumably post-date the cessation of quarrying activity.
Three quarries, four buildings and an anchorage labelled ‘Balure Bay’ are depicted on an estate map of 1787 (NRS, RHP975) but the quarry may have been abandoned by 1847, when another estate map shows only four buildings and a hut (NRS, RHP571). The 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Argyllshire 1880, sheet cxxix) shows a similar scatter of small buildings as well as a series of garden enclosures that take up most of the aforementioned terrace and are very similar to those depicted at Cullipool and on Easdale. The OS surveyors described Balure at the time as ‘a few houses and several ruins’ (Name Book 53, p.168).
Information from HES Archaeological Survey (GF Geddes), 13 September 2022.
