Breackue

NC70NW 53 7171 0566.

At NC 7170 0566 on a south-facing hillside, is a hut circle accompanied by a field system. The hut, on a spur and peat-covered, measures 8.5m diameter within a wall, 0.3m high and 2.5m wide expanding to 4.0m in the sides of the entrance which is in the S. Some quarrying of the wall in the SE is apparent and the hut is on the NE margin of an old road-quarry. The field system comprises numerous stone clearance heaps, spaced on average from 15.0 to 25.0m apart, and occasional lynchets. No measurable plots are discernible.

Surveyed at 1:10 000.

Visited by OS (J M) 19 May 1981.

There is a hut-circle (ROG95 338) and an extensive spread of small cairns on the S flank of Cnoc Dubh. The hut-circle, which is situated on a low knoll separated from the main hill slope, measures 8.2m in diameter within a boulder-faced bank 1.8m in thickness and 0.4m in height. The entrance is on the SSW; the apparent expansion of the bank terminals at the entrance recorded previously was not noted, but it may be an illusion created by differential robbing of the external face of the hut-circle wall. There is a quarry to the SW. The cairns (ROG95 973), which measure up to 4m in diameter and 0.4m in height, lie on the heather- and grass-covered hillside to the N and W of the hut-circle. The ground to the W of the fence-line shown on the current edition of the OS 1:10000 map (1970) has been improved and here the distribution of cairns is much thinner, interspersed by spreads of vegetation-free stone, presumably formed during the improvement of the hillside.

(ROG95 338, 973)

Visited by RCAHMS (DCC) 18 May 1995