Islay, Carn Bhioghairt

NR26NE 16 2567 6652.

NR 2567 6650 A hut circle and ditched enclosure found during field investigation situated on a narrow ridge in open moorland at c. 48m OD. The well preserved hut circle, levelled into the crest of the ridge, is 8m in diameter over a turf covered rubble wall 2m wide and 0.8m high. There is a 2m wide entrance in the south east defined by orthostats; the 1m wide break in the north west is probably a mutilation. Probing revealed stone in the featureless interior and outside the entrance.

The hut occupies a focal position in a sub rectangular ditched enclosure measuring 80m by 55m. The sinuous heather covered ditch, averaging 1.5m in width and 0.5m in depth, is lost in a marsh in the south east. It is interrupted by a 2m wide causeway on the west side. There is no trace of a bank or spoil heaps and no facing stones are evident however probing revealed scattered stone in the ditch bottom. The hut and the enclosure are not obviously contemporary nor is there any evidence of agriculture in the vicinity however the whole is consitant with a single unit habitation site.

Surveyed at 1:10000.

Visited by OS (T R G) 7 May 1978.

NR 256 665. A ditched enclosure containing a stone-walled hut-circle straddles the summit of a low heather-covered ridge 1.4km WSW of Grainel. The hut-circle, which is levelled into the ridge, lies near the centre of the enclosure. Its wall survives as a bank, covered with turf and heather, and standing up to 0.6m above a level grass-covered interior which measures 4.2m by 4.8m. Only one outer facing-stone remains, but a short stretch and some individual stones of the inner face are in position, giving a thickness for the wall of between 1.5m and 2m. The entrance lies on the SE, the inner end of the passage marked by two large orthostats set 1.9m apart. A narrow annexe is attached to the NW arc of the hut-circle, where the wall is lower than elsewhere. The inner side of the annexe is formed by the wall of the hut-circle, while the outer wall appears as a low stony bank defining an area 8m by 1.5m with the NE end open.

The sharply profiled ditch encloses an irregular area measuring 70m by 55m. It is 0.5m deep and measures between 2m and 3m in width lip to lip and between 1.5m and 2m at the base; there is no trace of the upcast from the ditch on either side. On the SE arc its course cannot be traced with certainty through marshy ground, but there is a well-marked entrance-causeway, 2.5m wide, on the W.

Visited June 1979

RCAHMS 1984

RCAHMS surveyed the hut-circles and enclosure at Carn Bhiogairt at a scale of 1:400. The site plan was redrawn in ink and published at a reduced scale (RCAHMS 1984, fig. 132B).