Archaeology Notes

Event ID 864404

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/864404

NF77SE 14 7516 7101.

(NF 7516 7101) Tigh Chloiche (NR)

OS 6"map, Inverness-shire, 2nd ed., (1903)

Tigh Chloiche, South Clettraval, a chambered cairn, has been much disturbed by secondary buildings and its present form bears little relationship to its original plan.

The narrow and almost parallel-sided chamber is surrounded on the N, E and S by traces of what appear to be circular buildings. Four orthostats of the chamber remain on the SW but the northern part cannot be traced. The entrance was from the E but nothing can be seen of the passage walls. Large flat stone slabs lie displaced outside the chamber and, whereas the extent of the cairn is fairly well marked to the N. and E., it drops to an extensive low spread to the S and SE.

Finds of potsherds are in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS).

A S Henshall 1972, visited 2 May 1962.

The remains of this chambered cairn are as described and planned by Henshall. At least two sub-oval buildings (the larger 5.0m by 4.0m) lie among the cairn stones and there are the possible outlines of another in the cairn debris to the south.

Surveyed at 1/10,560.

Visited by OS (W D J) 17 June 1965.

Lying immediately to the E of a modern fence in peat moorland, the remains are as planned by Henshall, though there are considerable doubts whether these relate to a chambered cairn or a round house. The sheer quantity of stones argues that this probably was a cairn, but it is not clear whether all of the four orthostats recorded on Henshall’s plan belong to the chamber. The lintels are set on piers within their line. While these may have been robbed from a chamber, in their present position they are more likely to roof a later domestic structure. Amongst the stone debris, there are traces of at least another two subrectangular buildings.

Visited by RCAHMS (ARG, SPH) 31 August 2009