Archaeology Notes

Event ID 646387

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/646387

HY51SW 3 5446 1005.

(HY 5443 1005) Graves (NR)

OS 6" map, Orkney, 2nd ed.,(1903).

'Applies to a green plot of ground, with stones standing on end ..... When the Covenanters were prosecuted in Scotland in 1679 a number of them were banished to the Colonies. Tradition of the country has it to be, that one of the transport ships took shelter in a storm or was driven in to "Deer Sound", but slipped her anchors, and became a total wreck on the W. side of Deerness, and out of 250 convicts only 50 escaped drowning, but they also soon succumbed to the hardships they underwent, and were buried with their comrades on the west coast of Deerness (See HY50NE 1) But it (is) supposed that some of the bodies floated with the tide to the west side of Deer Sound and were buried in the above mentioned spot.' A pencil note states that the graves of the Covenanters are immediately to the west of the Ancient building on the promotory called 'The Brough'.

Name Book 1880.

At HY 5446 1005 the tops of five stones just protrude above the surface. They seem to be completely unworked and vary from 0.3m to 0.6m in length.

Surveyed at 1:2500

Visited by OS (GHP) 14 April 1964.

Lamb erroneously records this site as 'a small promontory fort', a statement which applies strictly to HY51SW 4.

R Lamb 1979.

Slab-structures known as 'Covenanter's Graves' (HY51SW 3), and so noted in 1880, lie on the steep coastal slope E of Cott of Ness, beside the narrow isthmus leading to the cliff-promontory fort called the Brough. They appear to be the remains of prehistoric buildings associated with the fort that occupies the promontory.

RCAHMS 1987, visited April 1979