St Kilda, Boreray

Traces of an extensive field-system can be seen on the slope forming the western face of Boreray, enclosing an area of about 6ha below a head-dyke running for a distance of 600m to link the cliffs on the eastern and northern coasts with a continuous boundary (NA 15641 04613 to 15327 05065). In places the head-dyke has acted to channel water draining off the slope and consequently large sectors are heavily eroded or completely washed out. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that it was designed to separate the rough grazing on the upper slopes from areas lower down where there are traces of field-banks, one plot of rigs and a series of small garden plots and terraces.

Rather than following the contour, towards the southern end of the island the head-dyke drops above the main cluster of cleits, the Cleitean McPhaidein, petering out about 25m apart to either side of the artificial terrace occupied by the two cleits (NA10SE 9 & 10). Elsewhere, such an arrangement indicates the position of a contemporary settlement, and there is no reason to suggest that this was not the case here, though all that can be detected beneath the ranks of cleits currently occupying this area is a large, amorphous mound of rubble (NA10SE##). The cleits here are evidently later, as is one of the series of smaller bothies (NA10SE 8), where the line of the dyke is cut out by its halo of stripped turf, and in general wherever a cleit and a field-bank coincide, the cleit is the later.

The banks of the field-system represent several periods of construction, and, while there are traces of several dropping down at right-angles to the head-dyke, in the central sector it intersects several other banks, though the sequence between them is uncertain. These other banks seem to form elements of a large rectilinear enclosure extending higher up the slope, possibly in two stages, though the downslope side is open; the uppermost boundary of this enclosure is also overlain by a cleit (NA10SE 6). Possibly there has been another enclosure to the SSE of the Cleitean McPhaidein, which is the only place where there is a boundary along the lip of the coastal escarpment, albeit reduced to a low terrace, while another bank 50m up the slope turns down the slope as if to meet it beneath one of the cleits above the main landing (NA10SE 12). In this southern part of the system there are no traces of any garden plots, possibly because there has been extensive turf-stripping to roof the Cleitean McPhaidein, but there are vague hints of a series of low terraces beneath them, which, together with the terrace occupied by the two cleits NA10SE 9 & 10 immediately up the slope, may have their origins as narrow terraced fields.

Visited by RCAHMS (SH & IP) 14th July 2010