Archaeology Notes

Event ID 700135

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/700135

NS46SW 20 40155 63283

(Location cited as NS 401 632). Handloom weaver's cottage, built 1723 for a linen weaver and draper. A two-storey and attic rubble building with irregular fenestration, restored by the National Trust for Scotland and open to the public. There is a handloom on which demonstrations of weaving aremade.

J R Hume 1976.

(NS 4015 6328). The Weaver's Cottage was built in 1723 by Andrew, John and Jenet Bryden. Its walls are of rubble; the slate roof is of cruck construction. it was restored by the National Trust and is now in use as a museum.

R Prentice 1976.

NS 4015 6328 The Weaver's Cottage (NS46SW 20) is thought to have been built in 1723. In the garden behind the house are the remains of a gable end of a building built into the S wall of the garden. This building is marked on the 1st edition OS map (1857) but had been demolished by the 2nd edition (1897). At some point, probably after the demolition, the small lean-to against the W end of this building was converted into a wash-house by inserting a brick-built boiler and chimney. The standing elevations of the building were cleared of ivy in May 2002, photographed, and the main N-facing elevation was drawn. This contained the remains of a fireplace and a blocked window. A trial trench up to 6m long by 2-3m wide was excavated against the foot of the inner side of the gable wall. A stone forming a secondary front to the fireplace may originally have been the fireplace lintel. No traces of a floor were evident, perhaps having been removed by later landscaping when the ruins were tidied and flower beds constructed. Nineteenth-century pottery was found spread across the area of the trench, with a number of notable concentrations. A shallow scoop in the SW corner contained a number of sherds but also, surprisingly, revealed a Neolithic stone axe. Two pits dug into the made-up ground within the building contained larger concentrations of smashed pottery. The most notable was an elongated pit 1.1m long by 0.85m wide with sloping sides and a rounded base. This pit, over 0.5m deep, contained a large concentration of broken 19th-century pottery and a human skull. The skull had no lower jaw and only one upper molar. The axe and the skull may have been antiquities perhaps collected in the 19th century that were eventually thrown away. Hopefully a radiocarbon date can be obtained for the skull.

Archive to be deposited in the NMRS.

Sponsors: NTS, Renfrewshire Local History Forum.

D Alexander 2002