Loch Hope

NC45NE 4 4689 5901

(NC 4689 5901) Dun (NR)

OS 6" map, (1961)

A ruined dun with, to the E, the remains of a small out-work, roughly concentric to the dun, and extending between two dried-up stream beds.

Visited by OS (W D J) 2 June 1959.

This is not a dun, but a large hut circle containing a souterrain, set into the E side of a knoll within a wood on the W side of Loch Hope. It is overgrown with bracken and scrub, and measures 12.0m in diameter within a collapsed stone wall, 1.0m high at the back scarp in the W arc, but reduced to 0.3m internal height elsewhere. There are at least fourteen large stones exposed which define the inner wall face. The hut entrance in the E arc appears to be clubbed, about 3.5m long and 2.0m wide; the wall narrows to a width of 2.0m on either side of the entrance.

A lintel slab on the S side of the hut interior marks the entrance to the souterrain, and dry-stone walling of the W side of the entrance and the E side of the passage is exposed where the roof has collapsed. The souterrain is presumed to have curved around the periphery of the hut where there is a considerable mass of tumbled stone. In the W arc in the thickness of the hut wall (here spread to about 7.0m wide) there is a distinct depression which may indicate a collapsed chamber. If so, this would suggest the souterrain is about 20.0m long, and largely intact. The supposed outwork noted by the previous investigator appears to be natural. There is no evidence of associated cultivation.

Revised at 1:10,000.

Visited by OS (N K B) 2 May 1980.