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Kilbruar

Broch (Prehistoric)(Possible)

Site Name Kilbruar

Classification Broch (Prehistoric)(Possible)

Alternative Name(s) Kilbrare; Kilbraur

Canmore ID 6506

Site Number NC80NW 4

NGR NC 8229 0987

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/6506

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Administrative Areas

  • Council Highland
  • Parish Clyne
  • Former Region Highland
  • Former District Sutherland
  • Former County Sutherland

Archaeology Notes

NC80NW 4 8229 0987.

(NC 8229 0987) Broch (NR)

OS 6"map, (1969)

A circular structure, 30 yards in diameter on top and about 50 yards at its base with a height of about 30ft. A small enclosure on top has been used as a vegetable plot.

Name Book 1879.

A broch, which formerly occupied an isolated knoll, has been completely destroyed, and replaced by a sheepfold.

RCAHMS 1911, visited 1909.

All that remains of the broch is a turf-covered mound, 1.7m high, in which no structural details are exposed. The mound is surmounted by a "post-Clearances" circular enclosure. The broch is situated on the flattened summit of an isolated, natural knoll which has been scarped. Around the rim of the summit are the remains of a denuded wall reduced to a rickle of stones which encloses an area of about 36.0m in diameter. It has been quarried on the S side.

At a lower level towards the base of the knoll is an outer encircling wall, its outer face defined by occasional boulders, but largely reduced to a stone scatter. It is overlaid in places by later walls. It is destroyed in the N and NW arcs by the construction of a mill race, now dry.

Revised at 1/10,000.

Visited by OS (W D J) 26 April 1964 and (J B) 27 December 1975.

Activities

Field Visit (19 August 1909)

24. Broch, Kilbrare, Scottarie Burn. On the right bank of the Scottarie Burn, about ½ m. above its junction with the River Brora, and near the shepherd's house at Kilbrare, the O.S. map indicates a ‘brough’. The broch, which has occupied a most commanding position on an isolated knoll, has entirely disappeared and a sheep stell has taken its place.

OS 6-inch map: Sutherland Sheet xcvii.

RCAHMS 1911, visited (AOC) 19th August 1909.

Publication Account (2007)

NC80 6 KILBRARE (‘Kilbruar’)

NC/8229 0987

Site of a possible broch in Clyne, Suther-land; it originally stood on an isolated knoll but has been almost completely destroyed, only scattered traces of the wall remaining [1].

Sources: 1. NMRS site no. NC 80 NW 4: 2. RCAHMS 1911a, 7, no. 24.

E W MacKie 2007

Note (9 February 2015 - 31 May 2016)

This broch which has been reduced to a mound of rubble and is overlain by what is probably a small sheepfold, stands in the middle of a strongly defended outer enclosure occupying the whole of the summit of a hillock on the SE bank of the Scottarie Burn above Kilbraur. The flanks of the hillock have evidently been scarped, creating a ditch with a well-defined counterscarp rampart in places on the NE and SW, but there are also traces of a robbed wall extending round the rim of the hillock to enclose an area measuring about 36m in diameter (0.1ha). A short length of what may be an outer ditch can be seen above the burn gully on the WSW, but the whole of the NW flank has been slighted by the construction of a mill race. Another post-medieval enclosure is set in the ditch on the E

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 31 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2805

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