The Cashel, Lairg

NC50SE 12 577 044.

(A: NC 5798 0463) Hut Circle (NR) (Name NC 576 042) Enclosures (NR)

OS 1:10,000 map, (1970)

A scattered settlement of hut circles and field clearance

RCAHMS 1911, visited 1909; Visited by OS (A C) 23 June 1969.

This is a settlement of eight stone-walled hut circles (A-H) and an associated field system, that lies, the greater part,in a complex of recently reseeded pasture parks on an east-facing slope.

The field system occupying sixteen hectares is best distinguished in the moorland extending from the S limit of the enclosed ground where there are well-defined lynchets and large field clearance heaps; elsewhere the agriculture is shown by a decreasing density of stone clearance mounds, with occasional lynchets and stone clearance rickles. Measurable plots are not ascertainable.

All the huts appear broadly similar. 'A'-'F', much reduced and turf-covered, vary in internal size from 7.5m by 6.0m to 12.0m by 11.0m, within walls of indeterminate thickness. Entrances, where visible, are of simple form from the south or SE arcs.

Footings of a later, small structure abut on the SE exterior of hut D; in hut E rubble, overgrown, is heaped against the inside of the wall in the W half.

'G', remaining the most substantial, but mutilated in the NE and W arcs by the cut of an old track, is 10.5m diameter inside a heather-covered wall, standing at best to 0.5m and spread on average to 2.0m; an entrance is from the SSW. About 25.0m to the SSE are stone footings, to one course high, of a rectangular structure, the corners rounded, 7.0m by 2.0m.

'H', of slight form and set into the slope, is about 7.5m N-S by 7.0m inside a low, heather-covered, wall spread to 1.5m; an entrance is in the S.

Huts B-H Surveyed at 1:10 000.

Visited by OS (J M) 11 August 1976.

A programme of survey, section recording and sampling was carried out by AOC (Scotland) Ltd as a result of a pipe trench being dug through this area of prehistoric monuments. The survey recorded 50 monuments in a 20m-wide corridor along the pipeline, including previously unrecorded hut circles. The pipe-trench revealed an area of cultivation ridges and one negative feature. The distribution of soil types along the trench was closely correlated with past land use and the distribution of monuments.

Sponsors: Highland Regional Council, Historic Scotland.

S Carter 1993d.