Scheduled Maintenance
Please be advised that this website will undergo scheduled maintenance on the following dates: •
Tuesday 3rd December 11:00-15:00
During these times, some services may be temporarily unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Field Visit
Date 18 April 2000
Event ID 1171414
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1171414
NN 66271 42769. This large group of structures, comprising over sixty shieling-huts and several small enclosures, extends for about 300m along a broad terrace above the N bank of the Lawers Burn. Many of the huts survive only in fragmentary condition, having been built over, robbed, or eroded by one of the three minor burns that dissect the terrace, while others survive only as low turf mounds. Thirty, however, are reasonably well defined, roughly rectangular on plan and measuring internally from 1.5m to 5.2m in length and from 1.2m to 2.4m in breadth. They can be divided into two types on the basis of their wall construction, seventeen huts having walls entirely or largely built of turf, and thirteen having an internal stone facing encased within an outer shell or embankment of turf. The turf-embanked type includes most of the largest huts (six of the eight that measure 4.4m or more in length), but it also includes some of the smallest, including two sub-circular huts that measure only 1.5m in internal diameter (BL00 34, 41). Fifteen huts (including most of the turf-embanked ones) have low mounds outside their entrances, probably representing accumulations of midden material, which in some cases appear as a pair of elongated banks flanking the approach to the hut doorway. Internal features include aumbries set into the walls, which are found in four turf-embanked huts (BL00 33, 38, 40, 47), and an edge-set slab in one turf hut (BL00 52), positioned to one side of the entrance, which is probably part of a hearth. Finally, scattered amongst the huts there are at least four small enclosures, the largest of which measures about 6m in diameter within a turf bank.
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 also across the area of the huts described under NN64SE 8), though the plan does not show any individual huts. The 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Perthshire 1867, sheet lviii) depicts six huts, all roofless, but it is not possible to identify these on the ground with any confidence.
(BL00 33-64)
Visited by RCAHMS (AGCH, DCC) 18 April 2000
