Ribigill

NC55SE 15 centred 589 539

A: NC 5903 5394; B: NC 5901 5392; C: NC 5901 5397 - Three stone-walled huts found during field investigation, at the top of a W-facing slope. On the slope are several lynchets and one or two stone clearance heaps, probably from contemporary cultivation plots, which are masked by bracken. There is rig and furrow cultivation in the immediate vicinity of the huts.

Hut 'A' is circular, measuring 9.5m in diameter within a wall spread to 2.5m broad. No entrance is visible.

Hut 'B' is 7.5m in internal diameter with an inner facing of slabs on edge, best preserved in the N, where the hut is excavated into the slope. There are no definite outer facing-stones and the wall is spread to 2.5m. The entrance in the SE is flanked on the SW side by three earthfast stones and in the NE by two loose boulders giving a width of about 0.9m.

Hut 'C' is ill-defined, measuring about 8.0m by 7.0m within a denuded wall spread to 2.0m broad; an entrance is from the S, on the line of the long axis. (A and B are shown, but not named, on OS 6" map 1961.)

Visited by OS (ISS) 6 July 1971

This is a settlement comprising the three hut circles (A-C), as described in the preceding report, and two hut platforms (D and E) at NC 5893 5393 and NC 5893 5391 respectively. Of the three hut circles, A and C are similar, but B is better-preserved with an inner wall-face of slabs partially exposed, and it may not be contemporary. The hut platforms may also be of a different era.

Platforms D and E are typical of those examples found in unenclosed platform settlements of southern Scotland. They are set into a slope at the same level and about 15.0m apart. Each measures 12.0m across (N-S); D has a back scarp 3.0m high and a front apron about 0.8m high; in E the back scarp is 2.0m and the front apron 0.6m high.

Surveyed at 1:10,000.

Visited by OS (NKB) 5 December 1978.