Ingshowe

Excavated 1857 by Farrer. Petrie writing two years later

describes in detail the broch entrance-passage, which had an

aperture in the side paralleled only at Hoxa, S Ronaldsay. [R1]

Anderson gives dimensions as external diameter 60ft,

internal 33ft, wall thickness 13.5ft. [R2]

Much damaged by excavations and sea erosion. In the bank

adjoining the broch are traces of a scattered kitchen-midden

deposit. [R3]

Outline sketch-plan, ink. Petrie sketchbook no 3 SAS 487,

in RMS.

Turfed remains of broch as described. No trace of midden

noted by RCAMS. OS visit April 66.

No trace of midden. Dense-packed stonework including walls,

exposed on a 40m front around end of headland; erosion quite

rapid. Stonework appears to be founded directly on the glacial

clay.

Information from Orkney SMR (RGL) Jul 80.

In October 1980 a group of Kirkwall Grammar School boys

reported further erosion and picked up a spindle-whorl, an

unfinished stone sinker, a large lump of iron dross from the

bottom of a bloomery, and a piece of bloomery slag. These were

deposited in Tankerness House Museum.

Information from Orkney SMR 1980

HY31 9 INGSHOWE

HY/39031277

Broch in Firth, close to the shore at the point of a low peninsula. The site was explored by Farrer before 1866 [3] and this and the encroaching sea have so much destroyed the structure that no proper measurements are obtainable now.

The main entrance was found in the south-west with a guard cell on the east (right) side of the passage. In a part of the wall which stood about 3.7 m (12 ft.) high traces of a mural gallery survived: this must have been an upper tier. There was also supposed to have been an aperture or slit opening from the guard cell to the entrance passage but from Petrie’s sketch (below) this is probably the low doorway. In a bank next to the beach are traces of a scattered midden deposit [5] and human bones were found in the rubbish inside the broch [3].

Petrie made a sketch of the exposed remains, which were then about 3 m high, including the entrance passage (with door-checks formed of slabs set on edge, a guard cell opening off it (with a low door, shown with dotted lines) and the presumably Level 2 intra-mural gallery [6, 66, fig. 3.12].

Recorded dimensions [2], diameter 18.3 m (60 ft.), internal diameter 10.1 m (33 ft.) and wall thickness 4.1 m (13.5 ft.); the wall proportion is therefore c. 45%.

Finds [6, 67]: a stone whorl and iron slag.

Sources: 1. OS card no. HY 31 SE 5: 2. Anderson 1878, 318 (list of sites only); 3. Petrie 1927, 25: 4. Fraser 1927, 52: 5. RCAHMS 1946, 2, no. 322, 92: 6. Hedges et al. 1987, 66-8.

E W MacKie 2002