Skelpick

NC75NW 8 724 568.

(NC 724 568) Tumuli (NR) (22 shown)

OS 6"map, Sutherland, 1st ed., (1873)

Small cairns in which are interred human remains.

Name Book 1873.

This area of a shelving, W-facing hillside contains a hut circle with an associated field system and enclosure.

The hut circle, on a shelf at NC 7257 5686, has been set into the slope on the E. It measures about 8.7m in diameter within a stone wall spread to 2.5m wide and 0.4m high. The simple entrance is in the S. The heather-covered enclosure at NC 7239 5694 is sub-rectangular and set into the W-facing slope. Internally it measures 15.0m E-W by approximately 5.0m transversely. The stone wall is spread to 2.0m and stands up to 0.6m high; its E end is obscured by rubble. In the NE, a poorly-defined gap possibly marks the entrance. The age and purpose of this structure cannot be determined; the peat and heather cover suggests it is ancient and therefore possibly contemporary with the hut circle. The field system, defined by clearance heaps, none of which show obvious signs of being burial cairns, covers about 9 ha; no cultivation plots are discernible. Later cultivation, represented by rig and furrow, linear clearance and wasted walls, intrudes upon the field system. In places stones have been added to the earlier clearance heaps.

Surveyed at 1:10,000.

Visited by OS (J L D) 2 May 1960 and (J B) 12 December 1978.