Jura, Keils, Keils Croft, Stack-yard

NR 525 683. The small crofting settlement of Keils, formerly the township of Kilearnadill (Argyll Valuation Roll, 1751 (SRO, E 106/ 3/2)), retains several thatched buildings, now ruinous or used as outbuildings in connection with modern dwellings. They include a substantial single-storeyed dwelling with gable chimneys, and other gable-ended dwellings of earlier type, as well as byres and a small pigsty. Three of the buildings preserve remains of cruck-framed roof-structures. One of these comprises only a single scarf-jointed cruck-couple, while another incorporates three substantial couples carried on stone pads some 0.7 m above floor-level.

The most interesting building [Canmore ID 152686] lies in the S part of the township, immediately W of a yard which contains about a dozen circular cobbled stack-stances [152687]. It was probably constructed originally as a byre-dwelling, and remained in use as a byre until the partial collapse of its roof following the wet winter of 1980-1 (the accompanying drawings and description were prepared in 1974, by courtesy of M r A Black, Keils). It measures 14.5m from E to W by 5.5m transversely over drystone walls averaging 0.8m in thickness, formed of rounded boulders probably derived from the glacial drift-deposits, with larger roughly quarried blocks in the quoins. The lower or E end appears to have been reconstructed; the masonry of its gable is more neatly coursed than that of the remainder of the building, and its roof is carried on rafters springing from the wall-head. The upper end, or dwelling, measured about 6.5m in internal length and was divided into three bays by cruck-couples, while the fourth bay contained opposed entrance-doorways. The only windows were two small openings in the S wall, and a blocked recess whose timber lintel survives in the inner face of the W gable was probably an aumbry. The position of the original hearth is uncertain, since the floor has been altered to provide a drainage-channel, but a boarded smoke-vent supported on the ridge-purlins survives in the thatch above the second bay. While most of the existing stall-divisions are of timber, they include some large slabs of slate.

The lower members of each of the three extant cruck-couples are substantial squared timbers of pine, rising from pad-stones about 0.5m above present floor-level, and scarf-jointed with wooden pegs to the unsquared upper blades, which are separated by lap-jointed yokes and lower collars (the unsquared collar of the third couple (which collapsed in 1981) was a replacement, and the recesses for the original lap-jointed collar survived at a lower level). Short subsidiary rafters rising from the wall-head supported the lower of a series of purlins, some of which were held in place by heather rope. These in turn carried small rafters below a layer of turf which appears to have been covered originally with heather, but subsequently with rushes and straw.

RCAHMS 1984, visited May 1981.