Braehead

ND34SW 178 32465 40847

The ruins of this farmstead, which are situated in a field of pasture about 110m E of Braehead farmsteading, comprise a range measuring 28m from ESE to WNW by 4.5m transversely overall. The clay-bonded stone walls survive to wall-head height at the W end, but elsewhere they are largely reduced to footings. The interior contains four compartments, including a dwelling at its E end and a kiln-barn at its W end. The dwelling is small, measuring only 5.6m from ESE to WNW by 2.2m internally, and has a fireplace with flanking cupboards in the ESE gable, and a central doorway in the SSW side. The adjacent compartment is probably a byre and has two entrances on the SSW. The next small compartment was possibly open-fronted to the SSW. The kiln-barn at the WNW end has opposed doorways on the NNE and SSW respectively, though the former has since been converted into a sheep-creep. The rounded end of the range housed the kiln, but the bowl is filled with rubble and there is no flue visible within the interior of the barn. At 0.8m in thickness, the walls of the barn are thicker than the rest of the range, possibly indicating that this part of the building is earlier in date.

The range is depicted on both the 1st and 2nd editions of the OS 6-inch map (Caithness 1877, sheet xxix; 1907, sheet xxix). On the earlier map only the dwelling and the kiln-barn are shown roofed, and on the later only the kiln-barn is roofed. Braehead is described in the Ordnance Survey Name Book (Caithness No. 13, p. 283) as 'Two Crofter's dwellings occupied by Ann Miller and G Horne, the property of A Sharpe, of Clyth'.

(YARROWS04 751)

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS) 26 August 2004