Note
Date 1928
Event ID 921416
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/921416
Dun Mhic Laitheann.
This construction [NF97SE 1] occupies a position of natural strength on a precipitous rock adjacent to the island of Groatay, with which it is connected at low water. The rock measures approximately 50 yards east and west by 30 yards north and south, and it has evidently had the additional protection of a wall, varying from 9 to lot feet in thickness, around its edge. At the north-east corner and impinging on the outer wall are the remains of an oblong enclosure of peculiar type, 50 feet in length, and from 10 to 12 feet in width, its west end now entirely open, although at one time probably built up except for a doorway. At the highest point on the east are the remains of a strong rectangular building with walls 6 feet thick and an internal area of about 23 by 15 feet, and at the lowest part in the centre is a small walled enclosure which it has been suggested may have been a water reservoir. Cf. Beveridge's North Uist pp. 144-6.
[NF97SE 10] Of the neighbouring larger island of Hermetray, Martin, in his Description of the Western Islands (p. 51), writes as follows: "I saw here the foundation of a house built by the English in King Charles the First's time, for one of their magazines to lay up the cask, salt, etc., for carrying on the fishery, which was then begun in the Western Islands; but this design miscarried because of the civil wars which then broke out."
RCAHMS 1928
OS map: North Uist xxxii (Site).
