Muck, Gallanach

NM48SW 5 40078 80094

This farmstead comprises three buildings, a kiln-barn, enclosures and three pens, and is built at the back of a NE-facing terrace. There is also a cleared slipway in the inter-tidal zone to the N. One of the buildings is still roofed with turves (Muck02 277) and measures 7.8m by 5.1m over rubble walls 2m in height. The walls have rounded corners and an external chimney has been butted against the SE end. The entrance in the NE side is flanked with windows, and there is a third window at the NW end. The entrance opens onto a terrace in front of the NE side, and there are enclosures to the N, NW and E respectively. The other buildings lie to the SE, the larger (Muck02 278) measuring 8.5m by 3.8m within faced rubble walls 0.8m in thickness and 1.3m in height. Its entrance is also in the NE side, but its internal and external corners are square. The smaller building (Muck02 279) lies only 0.9m to the NW and measures 3.3m by 3.1m internally. The rubble walls are buttressed at the W corner and the external corners are asymmetrically rounded, suggesting that it has been extensively rebuilt. An enclosure to the NE of these two buildings has a large heap of field-cleared stones within its interior and a pen attached to its NE side (Muck02 280). The pen measures 2.4m by 1.7m within rubble walls and is built against a large boulder on the WSW. The kiln-barn (Muck02 283) lies still further to the SE, at the open end of a boggy gully. It contains two compartments and measures 5.6m by 2m within rubble walls up to 1.2m on the N side, where there is an entrance. The floor of the E compartment is 0.8m higher than that of the W and has the kiln set into its NW corner. The bowl, which is choked with rubble, measures 1.2m in diameter and 0.8m in depth, and the mouth of the flue is in the E wall of the W compartment. Drainage down the gully has been diverted around the W end of the kiln-barn, but the now ruinous walls that spring from its SE and SW corners would have blocked the gully. Two further pens lie within the farmstead, one to the N (Muck02 282), and the other to the S (Muck02 284). Both are built against the foot of a low cliff, the former measuring 1.5m by 1m within a stony bank, the latter 1.3m by 0.9m within rubble walls. The slipway extends for a distance of about 50m below the High Water Mark.

(Muck02, 277-80, 282-4, 428)

Visited by RCAHMS (AGCH, SDB) 18 May 2002

RCAHMS surveyed the kiln barn at Gallanach (Achadh na Creige), Muck on 22 May 2002 with plane table and self-reducing alidade at a scale of 1:250. The plan was later used as the basis of an illustration published in 2016 at a scale of 1:500 (Hunter, fig. 4.36).

NM 40080 80090 This building was not surveyed due to discovering that the building has a turf or sod roof. The building had been a ruin until the late 1960s when it was restored. There is some uncertainty over when the roof covering was changed from being thatched; the current tenant took occupancy of the building in 1988, at which time the roof was turf. It was listed in 1985, however, as having a ‘piended rush thatch roof over turf divots held down with fishing net and a variety of weights and stones’. It would appear that at some point between being listed in 1985 and the current tenant moving into the cottage in 1988 the rush had either degraded or blown away, and the bare turfs had developed to be the predominant roofing material. Further research into this building is required and the listing description updated accordingly.

Information from Zoe Herbert (SPAB) 2015, survey no.132