Publication Account
Date 2002
Event ID 586157
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/586157
ND49 2 BURRAY WEST (‘West Broch of Burray’, 'Ayresdale')
ND/48479871
This probable ground-galleried broch stands at the foot of rolling fields sloping down to the north shore of Burray I., and about 450 m west of the East Broch (ND49 1) (visited 16/7/1963).
Little of the structure is now visible since a massive concrete gun emplacement (dating from the 1939-45 war, and covering the Churchill barrier which now joins S. Ronaldsay and Burray to the mainland), has been built next to and partly on top of it. For convenience, and as with ND29 1 above (and the three Keiss brochs in Caithness), the name of the site has been shortened here to ‘Burray West’.
The broch was partly explored in about 1860 by James Farrer and a very brief account was published by Petrie [2], with a plan and cross section prepared by Sir H. Dryden based on sketches made 1879. The broch had an internal diameter of 31 ft. (9.45 m) and a wall 12.5 ft. (3.81 m) thick. The entrance was not located -- it must have been in the uncleared half of the wall -- but a corbelled mural cell (with a narrow door to the interior at floor level) was found from which a gallery ran anti-clockwise round almost half the exposed broch wall. A wide door, lacking its lintels, led from it to the interior near the other end and the door to this was about 18 in. Above floor level., It is not clear from the Commission’s account whether this end is real or simply the limit of the part of the gallery cleared, but we now know that the latter interpretation is correct [4, 94].
The 19th century cross section shows that the lintelled gallery is about 4.5 - 5.0 ft. (1.37 - 1.53 m) high, and that the wall is standing much higher; there would have been space for an upper mural gallery, but doubtless this was not observed by Farrer because of inexperience. There appear to have been some tall sandstone slabs set upright and radially in the interior. No relics are recorded which suggests that Farrer did not clear all the internal rubble away to reach any occupation layer inside.
Dimensions: from the cross section the wall seems to have been standing about 3.66 m (12 ft.) high; from the other dimensions given the overall diameter is 56 ft.(c. 17 m), so the wall proportion works out at about 44.6%.
Sources: 1. OS card ND 49 NE 2: 2. Petrie 1890, 76, 92, 93 no. 5: 3. RCAHMS 1946, 2, no. 861, 293 and fig. 368: 4. Hedges et al. 1987, 94-5.
E W MacKie 2002
