Old Castle, Bunrannoch

NN65NE 47 662 578

NN 662 578 The remains lie either side of the road from Bunrannoch to Culmore, Kinloch Rannoch, on the NW margin of Bunrannoch Medieval Village (NN65NE 5 and NN65NE 7 ), and include a round house and long house shown on a Rannoch Archaeology Project plan (on RAP website). What the survey identified was a coherent structure beneath and either side of the modern road, and causing a distinct hump in the road, at the location shown as 'old castle' on James Stobie's 1783 Map of Perth and Clackmannan (Nat. Lib. Scot. E.M.S.b.2.30). The structure has a well defined S and E perimeter, and fragmentary N perimeter, overall 95 x 45m, aligned WSW by ENE, but with the NW angle significantly curtailed by a scarp. This seems to have been contained within a moat 8m wide SSE and ENE, on the outside of which, at the SW end is a further substantial structure 35 x 20m, subdivided, and bounded on SSE by a high bank and berm. The RAP round house appears 10m square in plan, but with a rounded N angle, while the long-house is very slight overlying earlier structures. There appears to have been a sub-circular area of mounds and hollows W of this, 35m across. On both sides of the road are exposed rectilinear foundations, but the N side features have been damaged by mechanised planting. Cultivation ridges encroach from the E, and the southern margins are peppered with stone clearance heaps.

Description with historical notes and sketch plan deposited with Perth and Kinross SMR and NMRS (Acq No 2006/135).

T C Welsh, 2006.