Archaeology Notes

Event ID 661834

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/661834

NH63SW 19 630 334

Between Loch Ashie and Midtown are numerous cairns, hut circles, old enclosures, and a network of old dykes (ISSFC 1898). Woodham notes five hut circles in the area (A-E) and numerous small cairns (Information from A A Woodham to OS 9 August 1963)

In the area centred at NH 630 334, on undulating moorland, there is a settlement of five, circular, stone-walled huts (A-E) and an associated field system. (All hut diameters are given between wall centres).

Hut 'A', on the top of the knoll, measures c. 11.0m in diameter, and is mutilated. Although inner and outer faces are occasionally visible giving a wall thickness of 1.7m in the NW arc, insufficient remains for reliable overall measurement. The entrance in the E is mutilated.

Huts 'B' and 'C', on the top of a knoll, are contiguous.

'B' is c. 11.0m in diameter with a denuded wall of indeterminate thickness. The entrance in the E arc is ill-defined.

'C' is c. 12.0m in diameter, bounded by a wall of indeterminate thickness, in which one or two facing stones are visible, but insufficient to allow accurate overall measurement. The SE arc is destroyed and no entrance is apparent. A ruined field wall extends in a NE direction, apparently from the N side of the entrance of hut 'B', although mutilation at this point makes this uncertain, and the relationship of the wall to hut 'C' cannot be ascertained.

'D' is c. 11.0m in diameter with a denuded wall spread to c. 2.0m all round. The entrance in the E arc is ill-defined. Outside the hut to the S of the entrance is a boulder against which field clearance has been piled.

'E' measures c. 7.5m in diameter, bounded by a denuded wall of indeterminate thickness. To the N side of the 'simple' entrance in the E, c. 1.0m wide, is a mound, probably a stone clearance heap, c. 3.0m in diameter, but it is uncertain whether it lies against the hut wall or overlies it.

The field system comprises stone clearance heaps, lynchets and ruined field walls (previously noted as cairns and old dykes) forming cultivation plots, two of which, in the vicinity of hut 'A', measure c. 40.0m by c. 20.0m and 30.0m by c. 13.0m. The E side of the system is bounded by a contemporary ruined wall similar to that associated with NH63SW 39.

Huts A-E surveyed at 1:2500.(Visited by OS (R D L) 2 September 1963) Huts A-C

Surveyed at 1:10,000.

Visited by OS (N K B) 13 February 1970.