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Stoura Clett

Structure(S) (Period Unknown)

Site Name Stoura Clett

Classification Structure(S) (Period Unknown)

Canmore ID 1270

Site Number HU53NW 4

NGR HU 5183 3813

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/1270

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Administrative Areas

  • Council Shetland Islands
  • Parish Bressay
  • Former Region Shetland Islands Area
  • Former District Shetland
  • Former County Shetland

Archaeology Notes

HU53NW 4 518 380.

(From the plan these structures seem to have something in common with the Neolithic houses identified in Shetland by C S T.Calder, but they are not listed as such in his inventory in the Proc Soc Antiq Scot).

C S T Calder 1958.

At HU 5183 3813 are two crudely built structures of indeterminate character, as described and illustrated by the RCAHMS. Obviously dwellings of some description; they are apparently sited here for concealment, but their date of construction cannot be ascertained.

Visited by OS(NKB) 16th May 1968.

Plan.

Activities

Field Visit (8 July 1930)

Indeterminate structures, Stoura Clett. On the E side of the island, about half a mile to the S of Gruta Wick and high up on the cliff face near the island of Stoura Clett, are the remains of two drystone buildings of archaic appearance, much ruined and of uncertain character, lying within 50 yards of each other. The more northerly of the two, which is the better preserved, has consisted of two or three small irregularly-shaped cells or compartments separated by upright slabs. One of these compartments has a door-opening and two aumbries in the wall. Masonry has been used only in the spaces between boulders and the natural rock, which has been incorporated in the walling, and a roof has apparently been contrived by slabs laid horizontally, though irregularly, on the top. The general plan as well as the method of construction, would, therefore, seem to be of an early type, but the situation, perched among the debris and rocky outcrops of a precipitous cliff, with an almost perpendicular fall of some 70 or 80ft to the sea below, is rather unusual. The buildings would readily escape notice from the edge of the cliff above, and it seems not improbable that their position was carefully selected for its obscurity. Locally, they are regarded as having been places of concealment during the press-gang days, and they may, of course, have been so used then, whatever their age and original purpose.

RCAHMS 1946, visited 8 July 1930.

OS map ref: lvii and lviiA (unnoted)

Measured Survey (1930)

The northerly of the two structures at Stoura Clett was surveyed by RCAHMS c.1930. The plan was redrawn in ink and subsequently published at a reduced size (RCAHMS 1946 Fig. 463).

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