Braehead

ND34SW 383 ND 32165 40692

This farmstead is situated on a terrace about 150m E of The Lith and immediately W of the A99(T) public road. It comprises four buildings, two of which, a cottage and a range are still in use. The cottage (YARROWS04 271), which is fronted on the E by a garden, and the range (YARROWS04 272) immediately to the N form an L-plan arrangement, and the two unroofed buildings (YARROWS04 273-4) lie in the re-entrant between them.

The cottage, which measures 12m from NNE to SSW by 5.5m overall, has a central doorway and flanking windows in its ESE side. The range has a threshing barn in its E end, with a horse-engine platform (YARROWS04 267) at the E end of its N side. The grass-grown platform is levelled into the S-facing slope and measures 8m in diameter; some of the iron gearing survives below ground and this includes the drive shaft that enters the side of the barn. The middle of the range houses a garage and a shed, and there is roofless cart-shed at the W end.

The northern of the two unroofed buildings is probably the original farm dwelling, with what was a byre attached to its W end (YARROWS 274). The E end of the dwelling appears to have been truncated by the later construction of the cottage, and the doorway in its present E end originally linked two compartments. The surviving compartment contains a window in the centre of its S wall. The byre has a central entrance in its S side and in the interior there are upright flagstone stalls set against both the E and W end-walls. There are also cruck-slots visible in the N and S walls.

The southern building (YARROWS04 273) stands immediately S of the byre and contains two compartments. The W compartment, which had a S-facing lectern-type flagstone roof, had no external entrance and was linked to the E compartment by a door in the partition wall. The entrance to the E compartment is situated at the E end of the S side.

The present arrangement of buildings reflects the disposition of roofed buildings depicted on both the 1st and 2nd editions of the OS 6-inch map (Caithness 1877, sheet xxix; 1907, sheet xxix).

(YARROWS04 267, 271-4)

Visited by RCAHMS (ATW) 26 August 2004.