Morenish

This farmstead stands in enclosed pasture above the E bank of an unnamed tributary of the Allt Tir Artair about 250m N of the A827 road. It comprises five buildings (one of them a kiln barn) and an enclosure, all reduced to grass-grown rubble footings.

The largest building (BL00 1344) measures 20m from NNW to SSE by 5.8m transversely over wall footings 1m in thickness and up to 0.5m in height, and has an entrance in the WSW side. Immediately to the E, across a trackway that passes through the farmstead, there are the robbed remains of a second building (BL00 1345); its WSW end is missing, but it has measured at least 9.4m in length by 5.8m in breadth overall. This building stands at the NW corner of a roughly rectangular enclosure, which measures about 40m in length by 25m in breadth within stony banks, and whose S side has been overlaid by a later drystone dyke. The third building (BL00 1343), measuring 10.2m by 4.2m overall, stands to the S of the first, close to the SW corner of the enclosure, and about 20m to the S of that there are the remains of the fourth building (BL00 1594), which measures 9.3m from ENE to WSW by 3.1m transversely within a stony bank no more than 0.2m high.

The kiln barn (BL00 1593) stands at the N edge of the farmstead, NW of the first building described. Its SSE end has suffered from stone robbing, but it has measured about 9m from NNW to SSE by 3m transversely within a rubble wall 0.9m in thickness, now standing up to 0.6m in height. The kiln bowl, set into the NNW end of the building, measures about 2.3m in diameter.

This farmstead is depicted on John Farquharson's 1769 Survey of the North Side of Loch Tay (National Archives of Scotland, RHP 973/1, Plan 3), one of five settlements depicted on the farm of Ballemore. Farquharson shows a cluster of eight buildings and an enclosure, possibly including three of those described above (BL00 1343-4, 1594). The first edition of the OS 6-inch map (Perthshire 1867, sheet LXVIII) depicts one roofed building (BL00 1344), two unroofed ones (BL00 1343, 1345) and the enclosure. The second edition of the map (Perthshire 1901, sheet LXVIII) shows the largest building (BL00 1344) as unroofed; it also depicts a group of small unroofed structures (possibly representing a sheepfold) at the W end of the enclosure and around building BL00 1343, part of which is shown as roofed. There are no visible remains of these structures.

(BL00 1343-5, 1593-4, 2517)

Visited by RCAHMS (MFTR) 7 September 2000

NN 60045 35571: During the site walkover all three structures were noted as low mounds with clear wall lines surviving up to 0.80m high and 0.80m wide (Plate 3). Walls constructed from formed from large erratic undressed boulders. A large sub-rectangular enclosure is also visible running from the south east corner of the building complex.

Information from OASIS ID: archascu1-231730 (R Cameron) 2015.