Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 567226
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/567226
GREAT BERNERA (Beàrnaraigh Mhòr)
The five villages of Bernera, the only island in Loch Roag now inhabited, are linked to the main island of Lewis by Blyth & Blyth's bridge of 1952, which made pioneering use of pre-stressed concrete girders.
Dun Baravat, 300-200 bc Iron Age roundhouse on islet in Loch Baravat, with evidence of intra-mural galleries and other elements of broch construction, although it was irregular-shaped and never a broch tower. Reconstructed horizontal Norse mill, 10 minutes walk over Airigh Ard from road's end. Bosta (Bòstadh)
Iron Age village, probably first occupied more than 1,500 years ago, overlooking the creamy sweep of Bosta Beach. It was concealed beneath the machair until 1993, when a severe storm exposed the site. Excavations in 1996 revealed a complex of semi-subterranean, drystone dwellings, now vestigial, overlaid by a Viking house. The local history society has built a life-size reconstruction of one of the Iron Age dwellings nearby.
Cliff, Valtos (Bhaltos), Kneep (Cnip), Reef Ring of traditional crofting and fishing settlements on a wing-shaped peninsula rich in archaeological remains. These include the causewayed islet Dun Baravat, a complex roundhouse on a hill loch; the excellently preserved lower part of a broch tower on Loch na Berie, overbuilt with later cellular structures until c.9th century AD; five 19th century grain mills, above the road at Traigh na Berie, and an Iron Age wheelhouse complex at kneep.
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
