Archaeology Notes

Event ID 650582

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/650582

NC80SW 1 8345 0261.

(NC 8345 0261) Broch (NR)

OS 6"map, (1969)

An excavated broch which now consists of an immense pile of stones. The diameter of the broch is 27ft within a wall which is visible to a maximum height of 8 1/2ft internally but much less externally. The entrance passage, whose lintelled roof is almost intact,has no guard chamber. Opposite the entrance is a mural chamber; and to the north of the entrance is the entrance to the stair gallery. An outer wall encircles the broch at a distance of 40ft and encloses many secondary structures. The excavation finds are in Dunrobin Museum.

RCAHMS 1911.

The broch, set on the summit of a hillock, is generally as described by the RCAHMS. The wall is obscured by debris but the whole circuit of the inner face is visible, as is the external end of the entrance and a short stretch of the outer face on the east. These indicate that the wall was 4.9m thick on the west and 5.1m in the east. Both the main entrance and the entrance to the stair-gallery have have door-checks. The stair-gallery and the unroofed mural chamber on the NE are both visible from above. A scarcement about 0.2m wide survives in intermittent lengths at a height of 2m above floor-level.

The outwork which rings the broch is mainly fragmentary and is obvious only on the ENE and particularly on the NNW, at which point several courses of the outer face are visible and where the apparent strength of the wall may indicate the existence of an earlier 'dun'. Outside and below this wall an apparently artificial scarp follows the base of the knoll from the WNW round the north and mounts the slope on the east to terminate in the south. Along part of this latter stretch it adopts a counter-scarp and suggests a bank or wall. Outside this feature, in the NNW and ESE, are two stretches of banking the first of which is of a doubtful nature.

The relation of these outworks to the broch is open to doubt since they apparently defend in depth the steeper access, while the easier approach from the SW remains relatively vulnerable.

An earth and stone bank, probably associated with neighbouring abandoned settlement, impinges on the west ascent to the broch.

Revised at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (J M) 28 November 1975.

The finds from the broch in Dunrobin Museum are: Shale rings (Accession nos: 1866.1-6); 2 sherds (Accession nos: X90-1) and shale rings, discs and bead (Accession nos: X92-100a: bead, No. X98) from either this site or Cinn Trolla broch (NC90NW 5).

Information contained in TS of Catalogue of Dunrobin Museum by A S Henshall.