Archaeology Notes

Event ID 674218

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/674218

NM42NW 1 4217 2624.

(NM 4217 2624) Dun Bhuirg (NR)

OS 1:10000 map (1976)

Dun, Dun Bhuirg: This dun is situated on the level summit of an elongated rocky ridge, some 500m SW of Burgh farmhouse. It is sub-oval on plan and measures about 8.5m by 6.9m within a well-built dry-stone wall 4.1m in greatest thickness. The outer portion of the wall has collapsed over the cliff on the S, but elsewhere it is reasonably well-preserved, particularly on the N, where the outer face stands 1.3m high in five courses. A considerable length of the inner face has also survived at an average height of 0.4m above the present level of the interior.

The entrance, which is checked for a door, is in the E. About 2.4m N of the entrance the inner face of the dun wall is interrupted for a doorway giving access to an intramural chamber, 2.0m by 1.4m. A flight of steps leading up from the chamber was presumably designed to give access to the wall-head, but only the five lowest treads survive. The interior of the dun contains a late 19th-century memorial.

The approach to the entrance has been further protected by an outer wall drawn round the margin of the summit to the E of the dun. In the N half of its course it is fairly well preserved, the outer face surviving at one point to a height of 1m in four courses, but to the S of the entrance (opposite that of the dun) the wall has been reduced to a low stony scarp.

On level ground at the foot of the ridge on the N and E there are the mutilated remains of another wall, surviving as a series of grass-covered stony scarps about 1 m high, in which several large boulders project through the turf. Originally, it may be presumed, the wall was more or less continuous and ran in a wide arc from the cliff face on the E to abut against the foot of the ridge NW of the dun, the wide gaps now visible being due to relatively modern disturbance. The character of this work is clearly quite different from that of the dun and the upper outwork, and probably indicates that it is of secondary construction.

RCAHMS 1980, visited 1974

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (DWR) 24 May 1972