Publication Account
Date 2007
Event ID 586228
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/586228
ND06 11 THING'S VA ND/0808 6824 (visited 9/7/63)
This partly excavated probable broch is in Thurso parish, Caithness, and is typical of those on the Caithness plain, standing as it does on gently rolling terrain and on an artificial platform – a wide, flat mound surrounded by a ditch and with an outer rampart beyond it. In 1910 limited excavation had left exposed the entrance on the south-east and this is about 4.58m (15ft) long and 1.07m (3.5ft) wide at the exterior; there are door-checks, formed of slabs set at right angles into the walls, 1.17m (3ft 10in) in. Thereafter the passage is 1.30m (4ft 3in) wide. There are signs of the doorway to a guard cell on the right behind the checks, and of a second set of checks 2.44m (8ft) in from the first set. The inner wallface is visible in places, indicating an internal diameter of about 9.15m (30ft), and there are signs of a secondary wall built against it to the left of the entrance [2]. Traces of a guard cell on the left of the entrance passage have been seen [1].
A recent survey showed that most of the features described by the Commission are not now visible [3] but in 1963 there were still traces of part of the interior wallface with what may be a radial wall projecting from it. The name of the site derives from the Norse Thing-vollr – a local assembly or law court.
Sources: 1. NMRS site no. ND 06 NE 1: 2. RCAHMS 1911a, 119, no. 432: 3. Mercer 1981, 150, no. 461 and fig. 34.
E W MacKie 2007
