Archaeology Notes

Event ID 814691

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/814691

NR97SE 24.17 9745 7149

Formerly NR97SE 65

See also NR97SE 8003.

The pier is situated N of the saltpetre works (NR97SE 24.07). The pier is 6.0m wide and 38m long, and has a wooden extension 11m long. It is built from vertically set slabbed rubble, mortared on the S (seaward) side. The deck of the pier is interspersed at its edges with regularly spaced whinstone blocks incoporating mooring rings. This and a similar pier 80m to the S probably date from the establishment of the powderworks in the 18030s, and were vital both to the supply of raw materials, and for the dispatch of black powder to markets in Briatin and beyond.

Visited by RCAHMS (MKO), 30 July 1986

This pier was built to serve a gunpowder works (NR97SE 24) inland from Kames, and an associated saltpetre works beside the pier. As with the later and nearby steamer pier, it appears to have been built as a stone pier, and extended in timber later.

The gunpowder works closed in 1920, and the pier is now privately owned.

Information from J R Hume, Glasgow, December 2000.