Rudha Meadhonach

Visual inspection of fields, aerial photographs and digital photography.

On this plateau there is a roughly hexagonal area enclosed on all but its south side by turf dykes. Running east-west across the centre is another, slightly curved, turf dyke. To the south of this dyke the ground was taken back into cultivation after the Second World War and was ploughed regularly for aboput 25 years. In spite of this the rig and furrows can still be seen. They are straight but run in several different directions depending on the lie of the land. To the north of the transverse dyke the land was never reclaimed. Here the rigs and furrows show a reverse-S characteristic. Nowhere else in Cuil has this characteristic been noticed although in nearly all the fields, if viewed in the right light, at the right time of day and at the right season of the year, evidence of old rig and furrow cultivation can be seen in spite of the fields having been ploughed for many years, but not for the past 35. These rigs and furrows can be seen in some of the aerial photographs (e.g. 1968)taken of the area.