RCAHMS Archaeological Field Survey, Ben Lawers

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.

Date 2000 - 2003

Event ID 556529

Category Project

Type Project

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/556529

RCAHMS Archaeological Field Survey

Project Name: Ben Lawers

Project Code: BL00

Area: 69.6km2

Linework: TM000544.zip

Databases: MS731/29, DX001452, DX001457 and DX001458

The survey of an area of north Loch Tayside, centred on the National Trust for Scotland’s Ben Lawers estate, was the principal focus for fieldwork in 2000. The work was carried out in partnership with the Trust and was supported by a substantial grant from European funds. Ground and aerial survey have revealed a surprisingly large number of hitherto unrecorded monuments ranging in date from the prehistoric period to the 19th century. Included amongst the new discoveries are a chambered cairn, some 70 cup-marked boulders, two ring-ditch houses and an unrecognised class of structure probably associated with peat storage.

RCAHMS (DES 2000, 105)

The ground survey for this project was far more productive than expected, so much so that RCAHMS and The National Trust for Scotland had to provide additional resources to ensure its completion. Carried out under the direction of Steve Boyle, no less than 465 sites were recorded during the survey, which represents a 300% increase in the number of sites previously known in the area. Focused on the Ben Lawers Estate and the adjacent farms, this is a remarkable landscape, the more so for the survival of the estate maps of 1769 detailing the townships and their holdings. Fragments of this mid-18th -century landscape can be detected in the survey data, but it is equally clear that there have also been several periods of change and reorganisation since 1769. With the intense use of this landscape over the last 300 years it is not surprising that relatively few earlier monuments are now visible. Nevertheless, the team located a hitherto unrecorded chambered cairn and also discovered large numbers of cup-and-ring stone carvings, bringing the total of these curious markings in the survey area to 118.

RCAHMS Annual Report 2000-1, p.18

People and Organisations

Related Event(s)

Event	Type	Subtype	Notes	Date
1171413	RECORDING	FIELD VISIT	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. [...]	18 April 2000
1171414	RECORDING	FIELD VISIT	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. [...]	18 April 2000
1171417	RECORDING	FIELD VISIT	NN63NW 21 centred 61362 39252. [...]	20 April 2000

Digital Images

SC 2114740

Illustration comparing the depiction of the farmsteads at Margdow, Margnaha and Margcraggan on John Farquharson's survey of North Lochtayside (1760), Plan 7, and the Ordnance Survey 6-inch map Perthshire 1867 Sheet LXXXI with the remains as surveyed by RCAHMS in 2000

View full details

Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

2008

SC 2171465

Tombreck - Illustration comparing the buildings surveyed as part of the RCAHMS field survey of Ben Lawers with those shown on the John Farquharson Survey of North Lochtayside, 1769, Plan 9 and the Ordnance Survey 6-inch map Perthshire 1867, Sheet LXXXI.

View full details

Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

2010