Knowe Of Skogar
Broch (Iron Age)
Site Name Knowe Of Skogar
Classification Broch (Iron Age)
Alternative Name(s) Twatt
Canmore ID 1872
Site Number HY22SE 39
NGR HY 2639 2341
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/1872
- Council Orkney Islands
- Parish Birsay And Harray
- Former Region Orkney Islands Area
- Former District Orkney
- Former County Orkney
HY22SE 39 2639 2341.
(HY 2639 2340) Knowe of Skogar (NR)
OS 6" map, Orkney, 2nd ed., (1900).
This undoubted broch has been reduced to its foundations except to the south and SW where the outer face of the wall is exposed above ground-level for a distance of 12 to 15 ft , three or four courses in height. The wall-thickness may have been 12, possibly 15, feet: no other measurements are possible.
A few characteristic broch relics, such as hammer-stones and a saddle-quern were noticed among the debris by the Commission in 1930 and close to the site there is said to have been a kitchen-midden which has been utilised for manuring the adjacent land.(J Fraser 1925).
RCAHMS 1946.
This broch, situated in the disused Twatt aerodrome, has been further reduced by War Department activities and now remains as an amorphous turf-covered mound containing numerous displaced broch-like stones. No wall-face
can be seen: the name is not known locally.
Visited by OS (NKB) 23 May 1967.
Publication Account (2002)
HY22 1 KNOWE OF SKOGAR
HY/26392340
Possible broch in Birsay and Harray, a mere heap of stones in the middle of a cultivated field; the outer face of the wall is exposed on the south and south-west to a height of 3 or 4 courses and for about 4-5 m (12-15 ft.) [2]. The wall faces have now disappeared [1]. Artefacts like some hammerstones, a perforated stone loom-weight, a possible stone vessel and a saddle quern, which could indicate a broch, were noticed in 1928 [2, 4].
Sources: 1. OS card HY 22 SE 39: 2. Petrie 1890, 93, no. 28: 3. RCAHMS 1946, 2, 16, no. 16: 4. Hedges et al 1987, 53-4.
E W MacKie 2002
