Archaeology Notes

Event ID 650985

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/650985

NC75NW 6 7235 5752.

(NC 7235 5752) Broch (NR)

OS 6"map, (1964)

The remains of a broch impressively situated on a rocky knoll towering about 100 feet about the plain. It measures 8.4m in diameter within a wall 4.2m broad and about 3m high internally. The outer face is visible to a height of 1m to 2m for almost the whole circuit. A ledge-type scarcement can be seen on the inner wall face (MacKie 1975). The entrance passage, which is said to be 0.6m wide, and to curve southwards (RCAHMS 1911) is still indentifiable in the NW, one of the roofing lintels being exposed in situ (MacKie 1975), Miss Young (1964) notes a triangular lintel-stone lying outside the entrance and so dates the broch to the 2nd to early 3rd centuries AD. She also notes that it is defended by an earth and stone bank (RCAHMS 1911).

At the foot of the slope of the knoll on the east are three 'huts' 3m to 4m in diameter and a rectangular building, all later than the broch (OS 6"map, 1964).

RCAHMS 1911, visited 1909; A Young 1964; E W MacKie 1975; Visited by OS (J L D) 2 May 1960.

A broch with outworks generally as described by the previous authorities, except that it measures internally 9.0m E-W by 8.2m and the wall varies in width from 6.4m in the S to 3.8m in the E. (The marked increase in wall width in the S is probably due to the appreciable slope upon which the wall is built in this arc.) The entrance in the W arc is well-defined; no guard chambers are apparent. Within the broch on the N. side, the scarcement mentioned by MacKie can be seen.

The summit of the hill appears to have been scarped, and two discontinuous lines of stones in the W probably demarcate the entrance approach to the broch. At the base of the scarp in the east is an outer defence comprising a wall revetted on its inner side by large stones visible intermittently. There are traces of a further outer wall or bank below the broch on the NW side. To the N is a pond with a dam at its W side, this and the "huts" and 'rectangular building' are later than the broch.

Visited by OS (J B) 20 December 1978.