Field Visit

Date 1980

Event ID 607284

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/607284

Lamb (1980) records the heavily robbed Castle of Brough as one of a group of promontory-sited castles which includes Borve (NC76SW 2) and Old Man of Wick (ND34NE 2). In each of these sites a feature is the keep, a large, plain tower, standing beside the approach, acting as a focus of defence and protecting the buildings behind it, without actually being a gatehouse as in the 15th - 16th century castles. He suggests that the idea may be Scandinavian and compares these sites with the 12th century Sverresborg in Trondheim and Lilleborg in Bornholm, a royal castle which was abandoned in 1259.

The site of the Castle of Brough is a long, narrow promontory across the neck of which is a broad natural depression which has been enhanced to form a considerable flat-bottomed ditch. At the head of the slope onto the promontory is a large mound of debris in a position corresponding to the keep at Old Man of Wick and Borve. Seaward from this there are two ranges of buildings, identical in size and arrangement to those at Old Man of Wick, extending along the sides of the promontory and leaving a central pathway. At the end, where the surface slopes down to the rocks above the sea, the slope has been steeply scarped, a bank being made at the summit of the scarp and a ditch excavated at its foot, very much as at Borve.

The Castle of Brough is entirely undocumented.

R G Lamb 1980.