Deskry Hill

NJ31SE 17 3963 1279

See also NJ31SE 28 and NJ31SE 153.

At NJ 3963 1279 there is a single hut circle on a NW slope. It measures 13.5m E-W by 12.5 N-S with turf-covered stony walls 0.3m high. The entrance is in the W. There is no trace of other examples or field clearance in the area. The remains of two or three nearby field walls are probably later.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (N K B) 29 August 1968.

Site destroyed by 1985 (information from the back of a photograph provided by I A G Shepherd of Grampian Regional Council dated 1985).

Information from RCAHMS (G M Walsh), January 1994.

This monument is situated on a moderate NW-facing slope at an altitude of about 280m OD. [The suggested destruction of this monument that is noted by Walsh is not mentioned on the AAS Record Sheet).

Air photographs: AAS/85/02/R4(2)/3-6, flown 16 February 1985.

NMRS, MS/712/43.

(Location cited as NJ 396 127). Two hut-circles and the stances of two timber round-houses are situated on the N flank of Deskry Hill overlooking the River Don; they lie within a field-system of stony banks and cord-rig cultivation.

1. NJ 3963 1279. The largest and best-preserved hut-circle is also the only one that is depicted on the current (1976) edition of the OS 1:10,000 map. It measures 11m in diameter within a grass-grown stony bank about 1m in thickness and 0.3m in height. No attempt has been made to level the interior into the natural slope and there is an entrance on the NW.

2. NJ 3956 1277. This hut-circle is situated about 55m WSW of (1) on more level ground. It measures about 8m in diameter within a grass-grown stony bank about 1.5m in thickness and 0.2m in height. The interior contains traces of a ring-ditch which is about 2m in breadth on the SE, where it is best preserved.

3. NJ 3969 1277. What are probably the remains of a timber round-house are situated about 55m ESE of (1) beneath the fenceline that marks the boundary between the rough pasture to the SW and heather moorland to the NE. It measures 8m in maximum diameter from NE to SW and its perimeter on the uphill side is sharply defined by low scarp. The front of the round-house is less well defined.

4. NJ 3968 1280. About 15m downslope to the NNW of (3) a shallow hollow some 6m in diameter marks the site of a second round-house.

The field-system comprises three roughly parallel stony banks, which drop down the slope from below the crest of the hill on the SE for a distance of up to 240m, terminating at the edge of a bluff above the River Don, where they are cut by of a modern track. These banks lie from 50m to 75m apart and define two 'fields' each of which contains a single hut-circle (1 and 2). The NE field is crossed obliquely by another length of bank the NW end of which stops adjacent to the central of the three main divisions. Aerial photography (AAS 1994) has recorded the presence of cord rig cultivation over much of the area enclosed by the stony banks and fleeting traces of it can be detected in the NE field to the NW of the oblique subdivision. This area of cord rig respects the field-banks and the hut-circle, and is evidently later in date. Traces of the cord rig elsewhere are much fainter, but while they appear to overlie the hut-circle in the SW field, they lie askew to the main divisions of the field-system, and the rig may be overlain by the central bank. If this is the case, the hut-circle in the SW field pre-dates the laying out of the banks of the field-system.

Towards the SE corner of the field-system there is a small quarry (NJ31SE 52).

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS), 10 September 1997.

I A G Shepherd and M Greig 1996.

Scheduled (with NJ31SE 28) as 'Buchaam, hut circles and cultivation remains... the remains of two hut-circles... together with elemnts of a prehistoric field system'.

Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 9 March 2007.