Mull, Rubha Nan Oirean

NM35SE 18 3509 5138.

(NM 3508 5138) Fort (NR) (rems of)

OS 1:10,000 map, (1976)

Fort, Rubha nan Oirean: The denuded remains of a stone-walled fort occupy the summit of the north-westernmost portion of a fissured coastal stack overlooking the mouth of Calgary Bay about 300m NNW of Rubha nan Oirean. The position is one of great natural strength, being protected by vertical or overhanging rock-faces that range in height from 5m on the SE, where the stack is bisected by a gully barely 3m wide, to as much as 27m on the WSW. Access to the summit, which measures 42m in length by 24m in greatest width, is provided by a natural rocky 'staircase' situated midway along the nW face of the central gully. The best-preserved portion of the fort wall is on the margin of the summit area on the NE, where it appears as a low grass-grown stony bank or scarp, in which a number of isolated stones and short stretches of the outer face can still be seen. The presence of an isolated scatter of Plan on text card stony debris immediately W of the 'staircase' probably indicates that the wall formerly continued along most of the SE side; on the remaining sides the height of the cliffs doubtless made artificial defence unnecessary.

Access to the summit was further impeded by three short lengths of walling, two blocking the approach from each end of the central gully, and a third drawn across the outer end of a smaller, transverse cleft on the SE side of the stack. Of these, the best preserved are the examples in the gully, particularly the southernmost one, whose outer face survives to a height of 0.7m in five courses; it may be presumed that the northernmost, which has been extensively quarried to provide material for an adjacent modern wall, was originally interrupted by an entrance.

RCAHMS 1980, visited 1973.

The remains of a fort, generally as described by the RCAHMS (1980). Several grassy platforms in the interior may possibly represent hut sites.

Surveyed at 1:10,000.

Visited by OS (DWR) 2 May 1974.