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Field Visit
Date 18 April 2000
Event ID 1171413
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1171413
NN 65972 43040. This group of structures comprises at least fifteen huts and a small enclosure disposed along the banks of three tributaries of the Lawers Burn, and covering an area measuring about 100m from E to W by 60m transversely. Nearly half of the huts appear to have been built of turf; these are mostly reduced to grass-grown mounds or fragmentary stretches of bank, though one measures 4.2m by 2.4m within banks 0.4m in height (BL00 71). The remaining eight huts have stone walls, and these are better preserved. Five of them have been built with an internal stone facing encased within an outer shell or embankment of turf, while the other three are built entirely of rubble. Three of the turf-embanked type (BL00 65, 67, 70) are roughly rectangular, measuring from 4.6m to 6.2m in length and 1.6m to 1.8m in breadth within walls up to 0.8m in height. Each has an aumbry set into one wall and low mounds, probably middens, outside the door. The other two turf-embanked huts (BL00 66, 68) are sub-circular on plan, and much smaller, measuring respectively 1.8m and 1.5m in internal diameter. Each stands behind one of the larger huts, suggesting they were paired, one hut perhaps serving as the dwelling, the other as an outhouse or dairy.
The three rubble-built huts stand at the W edge of the group (BL00 72-4). They measure from 3.8m to 4.7m in length and 1.6m to 1.9m in breadth within walls 0.4m high. One (BL00 74) is divided into two compartments, another (BL00 73) has a possible midden heap outside its doorway, and the third (BL00 72) has an edge-set slab to one side of the entrance, probably part of a hearth. Immediately to the E of the last hut, at NN 6591 4304, two flat slabs bridge a narrow, deeply-incised burn gully; the slabs are 1.2m long and set 0.6m apart. Finally, the enclosure (BL00 69), at the centre of the group, is square on plan, measuring 4m by 4m within a rubble wall embanked with turf.
John Farquharson's 1772 Plan of Deshoir (National Archives of Scotland, RHP 569) is annotated 'Sheallings of Lawers' across the area occupied by these huts and those described under NN64SE 2, though the plan does not show any individual huts. The 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Perthshire 1867, sheet lviii) depicts one of the rubble-walled huts (BL00 72), which is shown as unroofed.
(BL00 65-74)
Visited by RCAHMS (AGCH, DCC) 18 April 2000
