Publication Account
Date 2007
Event ID 587494
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/587494
NF87 6 THE UDAL (‘Coileagean an Udail’)
NF/824783
These are four aisled wheelhouses, probably dug-out, in North Uist [7, 232-3]. They appear to have been built into a slope and therefore to have been partly dug-out and partly free-standing. The site at Udal is one of the most remarkable in north-west Europe and consists of several mounds containing structure and occupation layers spanning the last three or four millennia. It was excavated for many years in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s by Iain Crawford but full details of the discoveries are not available yet, and several interim reports have to be relied on.
Judging from the small scale plan available [7, 122] three of the wheelhouses at Udal form a fairly tight cluster, like Foshigarry (NF77 6). Some further architectural details can be gleaned from Crawford’s comments and table [7]. Four C-14 dates are listed in his table of dates [7, Table 15] and they all fall into the first and second centuries AD. A piece of 3rd century Roman pot in a late wheelhouse context was also found [7, Table 17].
Sources: 1. NMRS site no. NF 87 NW 1 and 2: 2. RCAHMS 1928, 273, no. 89: 3. Crawford 1965: 4. Crawford 1966: 5. Discovery and Excavation in Scotland, 1966, 29: 6. Armit 1992, 51-2: 7. Crawford 2002.
E W MacKie 2007
