Skaill

HY50NE 21 5889 0633.

Howan (NAT) - a small sandy point, shown as a circle of pecks.

Name Book 1880; OS 6" map, Orkney 2nd ed., (1903).

A grass grown hillock S of the churchyard at Skaill may have been a broch. Coast erosion has revealed a deposit of typical broch refuse, and hammer stones and potsherds also typical were picked up in June 1930. Featureless dry-stone contruction was also noticed.

RCAHMS 1946, visited 4 June 1930.

At HY 5889 0633 there are grass covered traces of an inner circle 7.0m in diameter, of a possible bank or wall. The thin silt of black sand, shells and some bones in the bank facing the sea are still apparent, but no other evidence that this feature might have been a broch, could be found. The hammer stones and potsherds picked up at the site could not be located.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (RD) 31 August 1964

To the NW of the church and close beside the bungalow (HY 5881 0638), there was a considerable open-area excavation of substantial late Bornze Age settlement which lay immediately below the ploughsoil. At the same time a trial trench was dug into the prominent mound known as the Howan (HY 5890 0633) SE of the church, which in 1930 was suggested as the site of a broch, and a dark deposit observed in the eroding shoreline. The Howan proved to be a sand-dune and the deeply-buried dark deposit is an ancient ploughsoil, in which ard-marks, probably of Bronze Age date, were found. In 1982, Mr Foubister encountered fragmentary prehistoric buildings between the Howan and the SE corner of the Churchyard dyke (HY 5886 0635).

RCAHMS 1987