Carn Ban

NH62NW 18 6267 2501.

At NH 6267 2501 is a circular stone-walled hut measuring c. 11.0m in diameter between the centres of a wall destroyed in the NW and SE by land reclaimation and denuded elsewhere. Four outer facing stones survive in the SW arc. The entrance is not evident.

To the N of the hut is a field system marked by stone clearance heaps and occasional ruinous walls and lynchets. Details of cultivation plots are obscured by deep heather, and near the hut are denuded by modern cultivation, but one plot was measured at c. 30.0m by c. 20.0m.

Hut surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (A A) 6 January 1972.

On the W-facing hillside to the SW of the summit of Carn Ban there are a hut-circle, a burnt mound and fragments of a field-system.

The hut-circle (USN93 255) is situated in improved pasture on a terrace above the E bank of the River Nairn at NH 6267 2504. It measures 9.2m in diameter within a faced stony bank spread to 2.5m in thickness and stand to 0.3m in height. It is set into gently-sloping ground on the SE, and terraced slightly on the NW. It has been ploughed-over, and there are gaps in the wall on the SE and NW, but the wall may thicken slightly on either side of the latter gap, suggesting that the entrance may have been here.

In rough grassland on the hillside above the hut-circle, and about 190m to the E of it at NH 6285 2503, there is a burnt mound measuring 9m by 8m and standing 0.5m high. The mound is U-shaped, with an opening on the NW side. A spring rises 10m to the N of it, and, although the water from this now flows around the back of the mound, it appears to have been re-routed, presumably during agricultural drainage operations (USN93 256).

The field-system, which consists of clearance cairns and stretches of bank, extends along the hillside to the N of the burnt mound, covering some 4ha.

(USN93 255-6)

Visited by RCAHMS (SDB) 4 March 1993.