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Archaeology Notes
Date - 1972
Event ID 699644
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Archaeology Notes
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/699644
NS07NW 4 0186 7532.
(NS 0187 7532) Fort (NR) (Vitrified)
OS 6" map, Argyllshire, 2nd ed., (1900)
The vitrified dun (Feachem 1963) on Eilean Buidhe measures 71' E-W by 66' transversely from crest to crest of its broken-down wall. Maxwell's excavations showed that where Hewison suggested there had been 'towers', it was only a butressing of the foundation course necessitated by the slop of the rock. He stripped a large area at the W side of the dun, revealing a rough paving of stones, apparently constructed to fill a hollow space in the rock floor of the fort. Among the paving stones, he found a few pieces of vitrified rock, suggesting that the paving had been laid at a later period of occupation, when the wall was partly demolished. Hewison (1893) postulated an entrance in the ENE, but excavatiions there came upon a mass of vitrified rock continuous with the vitrified core on either side, disproving it, but excavation in the NNE-'3' on plan suggested a 3-5" wide gateway there.
A small hollow, perhaps a well or cistern, situated midway between the centre and the S point of the dun was emptied of water and cleared of silt, within a day it had refilled with water. No artifacts were found.
Sources: J K Hewison 1893; J H Maxwell 1941; R W Feachem 1963.
The walls of this fort are now overgrown with grass but it is otherwise as described.
Surveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (I A) 30 November 1972.
