Nether Bigging

HY31SW 36 3006 1192.

There is a complex of partly clay-built foundations at the tip of a low, flat tongue of land, called Gernaness, which projects from the south shore of the Loch of Stenness, near the farm of Nether Bigging. There are slight signs of a possible ditch across the neck of the promontory. Excavations in 1924-5 (J S Clouston 1926, plan) produced a few hammer-stones, fragments of pottery, pieces of stag's horn, and many bones of domestic animals, but no evidence of the typology or period to which the structures belong, although it was persuasively argued that the building was a Norse castle. (J S Clouston 1929). Neither is the building a broch, although a piece of the pottery from the site, and now in Kirkwall Museum, is suggestive of 'broch' pottery.

It is safe only to say that 'the foundations ... represent buildings of different types, dating partly from prehistoric times, and apparently covering a long period of occupation that was probably not continuous'.

RCAHMS 1946.

The site is located at HY 3006 1192. It is continually flooded by the sea and, although a considerable quantity of stone is visible in the area of excavation, no definite outlines can be determined and it is impossible to classify.

There is no trace of the ditch across the promontory.

Visited by OS (RB) 10 May 1966.