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Publication Account
Date 2002
Event ID 585498
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/585498
HY31 9 INGSHOWE
HY/39031277
Broch in Firth, close to the shore at the point of a low peninsula. The site was explored by Farrer before 1866 [3] and this and the encroaching sea have so much destroyed the structure that no proper measurements are obtainable now.
The main entrance was found in the south-west with a guard cell on the east (right) side of the passage. In a part of the wall which stood about 3.7 m (12 ft.) high traces of a mural gallery survived: this must have been an upper tier. There was also supposed to have been an aperture or slit opening from the guard cell to the entrance passage but from Petrie’s sketch (below) this is probably the low doorway. In a bank next to the beach are traces of a scattered midden deposit [5] and human bones were found in the rubbish inside the broch [3].
Petrie made a sketch of the exposed remains, which were then about 3 m high, including the entrance passage (with door-checks formed of slabs set on edge, a guard cell opening off it (with a low door, shown with dotted lines) and the presumably Level 2 intra-mural gallery [6, 66, fig. 3.12].
Recorded dimensions [2], diameter 18.3 m (60 ft.), internal diameter 10.1 m (33 ft.) and wall thickness 4.1 m (13.5 ft.); the wall proportion is therefore c. 45%.
Finds [6, 67]: a stone whorl and iron slag.
Sources: 1. OS card no. HY 31 SE 5: 2. Anderson 1878, 318 (list of sites only); 3. Petrie 1927, 25: 4. Fraser 1927, 52: 5. RCAHMS 1946, 2, no. 322, 92: 6. Hedges et al. 1987, 66-8.
E W MacKie 2002
