St Kilda, Boreray

Situated due N of the main concentration of cleits on Boreray, this is almost certainly the remains of a small bothy, displaying the characteristic entrance at the upper end of one side and a deep concentric scar where turf has been dug out to cap the roof.

The bothy itself measures about 5.3m from NE to SW by 3.2m transversely overall, and its walls, which are about 0.8m thick, stand to a height of 0.6m above the floor of the interior and about 2m above the foot of the SW end. The interior is roughly oval on plan, measuring 3.2m in length and apparently tapering from 1.4m in breadth at the upper end on the NE to 1.1m towards the SW, though this may have been accentuated by the way the corbelled walls have collapsed inwards. The entrance is situated at the NE end of the SW wall and is 0.9m wide by 0.55m high, though its two lintels have collapsed, the outer at its NE end, and the inner, which was set at a slightly higher level, at its SW end. As with the entrances of the other small bothies (NA10SE 8, 19 & 41), the curved inner face of the NE end has been carried out through the line of the wall to form one side of the entrance passage.

While the greater part of the stonework of the bothy is currently entirely exposed, at the uphill end it merges externally into a grass-grown mound defined by low scarps that also extend down both sides of the bothy. A few stones lying loose along the foot of this scarp along the SE side raise the possibility that the whole bothy was once encased in turf and retained by an external kerb, but the scarps themselves seem to form the inner lip of the concentric turf stripping scar, which measures 3m in breadth and up to 0.5m in depth, and the stones are as likely to have fallen down from the wall.

(Mary Harman Boreray 15)

Visited by RCAHMS (SPH, IP) 13 July 2010