Tiree, Dun Nan Gall

NL94SW 8 9350 4086.

(NL 9350 4086) Dun nan Gall (NAT) Fort (NR)

OS 1:10,000 map, (1976)

Fort, Dun nan Gall: This fort is situated on the summit of a coastal promontory, about 500m NNW of Ceann a' Mhara. The position is one of great natural strength, for the S flank of the promontory presents a sheer rock-face 30m ,in greatest height, and the N flank, although now largely grass-covered, is extremely steep and studded with rocky outcrops. Access is thus available only from the ESE, where the natural erosion of a transverse felsite dyke, possibly augmented by quarrying in ancient times, has reduced the neck of the promontory to a width of barely 8m.

The fort is roughly trapezoidal on plan and measures about 55m by 30m internally. Its main artificial defence has been a stone wall which is now much reduced by stone-robbing and collapse, especially in the NW sector. The wall is best preserved on the E, where it crosses an elongated rocky knoll immediately overlooking the line of easiest approach. In this sector, which includes the entrance, several stretches of outer facing-stones have survivied in their original position, and at one point just to the S of the entrance the face stands to a height of 1.1m in five courses, some of the blocks used in its construction being particularly large. In the interior of the fort, at the S end of the knoll mentioned above, there is a row of earthfast boulders apparently forming a built face which runs at right angles to the line of the main wall. It is possible that these may have served as a revetment, allowing the wall to be sharply reduced in thickness where it approached the edge of the cliff on the S flank, as at Dun Chruban, Lismore (NM73NE 2). However, the fact that the inner half of the wall has been extensively mutilated in this area by the construction of an irregularly-shaped secondary enclosure makes it difficult to be certain about the significance of this feature. Elsewhere the course of the wall is indicated by a grassy scarp and occasional isolated stones of the outer face, as shown on the plan. On the date of visit a small landslip had exposed a cross-section of the wall on the NNE, revealing that its thickness in that sector was 1.5m and that a midden had been piled up against its inner face; amongst the material that had been eroded out of the midden was a sherd of coarse pottery similar to that found in Hebridean wheel-houses. At the entrance, which is situated on the E, close to the N flank of the promontory, the wall-terminals have been staggered in such a way as to allow the outer angle on the N side of the entrance-passage to be founded on a rocky outcrop, while the natural bedrock in the mouth of the passage appears to have been cut away slightly to give easier access. Further protection has been provided at this point by two short stretches of walling: one flanks the entrance on the E, the other springs from the fort wall about 2.7m S of the entrance and is drawn along the SE crest of the elongated knoll parallel to the main wall for a distance of about 16m. Both outworks are reduced to isolated scatters of stony debris in which occasional stretches of outer facing-stones can still be seen.

Including the example already mentioned, the E part of the interior contains the grass-grown remains of at least four irregularly-shaped enclosures, all of which take the form of shallow depressions, edged intermittently with placed stones. In the absence of excavation their date and purpose must remain uncertain, but, although they are all probably secondary, it is not impossible that, as at Dun Mor Vaul, (NM04NW 3), some are nevertheless of considerable antiquity.

RCAHMS 1980, visited 1975; E Beveridge 1903; E W MacKie 1963.

Surveyed at 1:10,000.

Visited by OS (D W R) 27 June 1972.