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Field Visit
Date May 1979
Event ID 1166724
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1166724
NR 416 657. The only broch on Islay is situated 500 m NE of Lossit Farm on the summit of Dun Bhoraraig (189m OD). The site commands extensive views in all directions, and from it a steep scarp falls away for 8.5m to the S and W, while on the NW and NE there is a broad quarry-ditch. This ditch is presumably what was described by Pennant as 'a deep foss' (Pennant 18): its inner edge is formed by rock faces 3.5m high and it has an external bank rising up to 2m above the ditch bottom.
Almost circular on plan, with an overall diameter of about 23m, the drystone wall of the broch has an average thickness of 4.8m and encloses a central court 13.7m across. Much of the stonework has been robbed away and some rubble has fallen down the slope to the W. Of the inner and outer faces of the wall, which were constructed of large blocks up to 0.9m by 0.4m, only one course is now visible through the rubble, but Pennant found the walls standing to a height of about 4.3m. The central court is now filled with rubble, and the scarcement, described by Pennant as 'a stone seat running all S round the bottom of the wall, about two feet (0.6m) high', only just appears through the debris as a shelf about 0.6m wide. Nowhere docs more than one course of the inner face survive above the scarcement.
The entrance is on the ESE; at its outer end it is about 0.9m wide but it narrows slightly to a width of 0.7m immediately outside the door-check which was positioned 1.2m down the entrance-passage. The check itself consisted of a transverse slab behind which the sw side of the passage is set back to give a total width of 1m; this gradually increases to 1.2m, only to narrow again to 0.7m at the inner end. No bar-hole is visible. Although the entrance-passage is choked with rubble the walls are still exposed to a height of 1.1m, but the lintels mentioned by Pennant are no longer in situ. The widening of the entrance-passage behind the door-check may have been partly to provide easier access to a guard-chamber set in the thickness of the wall on the sw side. Access to it is provided by a narrow passage (a on RCAHMS plan) about 0.7m wide; the lintels that form its roof are now only 0.7m above the rubble on the floor. The walls of the chamber itself, which are corbelled, are visible for a height of 1.2m and enclose a space measuring 1.8m by 1.5m. At the extreme sw end of the guard-chamber a little of the wall-face has fallen away to reveal an ascending series of lintels or treads above a void within the thickness of the wall; this structure may have carried a gallery over the guard-chamber and across the main entrance-passage. Pennant's description mentions that there was 'a hollow, probably intended for guard-rooms' on each side of the entrance-passage but there is now no trace of any chamber on the NE side. If one existed, then access to it must have been from the central court, unless Pennant was referring to structures then visible at a higher level.
Part of another chamber (b), with walling standing to a maximum height of 1m, can be seen on the W; measuring about 1.2m in width and at least 1.4m in length, it appears to have been approached by a passage running in from the line of the inner face of the broch wall. Vestiges of other intramural structures (c, d) are shown on the plan; their exact function and their relationship to one another are uncertain, although Pennant states that the walls had 'within their very thickness... a gallery, extending all round'.
The line of easiest approach to the broch, from the SSE, seems to have been defended by an outwork which Pennant described as follows: 'On the outside of the fort is another work, under which is the vestige of a subterraneous passage conducting into it, a sort of sally port'. This structure has been very heavily robbed and is now represented only by a slight grass-grown band of rubble which runs around the S and E margins of the platform on which the broch stands. On the N and w an outer defence would have been superfluous and no sign of any junctions within the outer face of the broch wall can be seen. A slight hollow in the debris, at a point aligned on the entrance-passage of the broch, probably marks the position of the entrance through this outer wall.
Just to the NE of the entrance-passage the incomplete remains of a small rectangular stone monument or folly with solid round projecting angle-bastions overlie the ruins of the broch; it is in turn surmounted by a modern marker-cairn.
RCAHMS 1984, visited May 1979
