Archaeology Notes

Event ID 677551

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/677551

NN53SE 5 556 303.

(NN 556 303) The farm of East Lix, with eight tenants, was in existence by the mid-18th century but was probably in existence before 1685.

About 1790 the run-rig system was abandoned and the farm split into eight or nine small holdings, but by the mid-19th century it had become a single farm, now merged with a neighbouring sheep farm.

There are six clusters of ruinous dry-stone buildings, built about 1800. Each comprises a number of single-roomed cottages and farmhouses, the latter 50 to 60ft in length by 13ft 6ins wide internally, with byre and living-room under the one roof.

The sites of houses mapped in 1755 (W Cockburn plan in Register House) have been located but not proved by excavation, but two bloomeries, each on a windy hillock, have been found.

H Fairhurst and G Petrie 1964

The depopulated area known as East Lix has twenty-two buildings, a corn-drying kiln and several associated enclosures. The buildings are generally as described above, the best preserved standing in places to a height of 1.8m. Only two possible bloomery sites were located, at NN 5556 2987 and NN 5603 3025; both are on hillocks. No trace of any slag was found.

Visited by OS (RD) 12 December 1968

Fairhurst's investigation, which included excavation, revealed no evidence of settlement earlier than the mid-18th century, although the area is known to have been occupied in the medieval period (see NN55SE 23).

H Fairhurst 1971.

A township, comprising eight unroofed buildings and four enclosures is depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Perthshire 1867, sheet lxxx). Nine unroofed buildings and five enclosures are shown on the current edition of the OS 1:10000 map (1988).

Information from RCAHMS (AKK) 9 December 1997.