Publication Account

Date 1988

Event ID 656421

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/656421

NF19SW 21.22 10068 99510

The head dyke abuts this small drystone structure which also possesses a small cell at the N end. Its position and form thus indicate that it was built before the late 1830s, and it was in this cleit that the only surviving cleit door was found.

Measuring 3.91m in length by 0.91m internally, with a lintelled roof 1.45m above floor-level, the main building is aligned roughly N-S. Unusually, the entrance is in a corner position at he N end of the W side-wall. Externally, the walls are battered and made up of relatively small stones; inside, the masonry consists of fairly large boulders, and the walls are slightly corbelled. The rounded S end traverses the line of the head dyke which abuts the flanking walls.

The W side-wall continues northwards to form a small subcircular cell which measures 1.42m by 0.99m transversely, its corbelled roof surviving to a height of 1.04m. Beside and above the cleit entrance, 0.81m above the cleit floor, there is a small opening into the cell; the aperture is 0.46m high and 0.76m deep. The cell has partly collapsed on the E side where there may be another entrance or an aumbry.

A wall, which forms part of a higher-level enclosure, appears to be bonded into the cleit immediately N of the doorway, and a ruined wall, apparently partly dismantled, adjoins the E side of the cell.

G P Stell and M Harman 1988.