Laughenghie

NX66NW 11.2 6144 6617.

Around the farmstead of Laughenghie are a series of globular drystone walled enclosures which form 17 fields covering about 12 hectares, of which 90% displays traces of rig. The stony dykes still stand in places to 1m in height and where the dykes run along the bottom of cultivated fields lynchets have formed. The rig is of two types, a steep-sided furrow and the standard gently undulating furrows of plough-ridges. The width of the latter varies in general from 3m to 4.5m, but it is evident that the ridges have been split in places, particularly to the SW of the farmstead where typical widths are about 2m and have steep-sided furrows. The plough ridges do not run right up to the stone dykes and in places a clear-cut headland ridge has developed. Several of the ridges have a distinct curve which is of the reverse-S type (e.g. at NX 6137 6631). Although not planned, the oblong field at the NE end of the site has 3m wide rig which ran from NNW to SSE across the spur which it occupies (NX 6163 6642). The steep-sided ridges are best defined at three locations (NX 6152 6627; NX 6140 6630; NX 6152 6639) where in each case there are short lengths of ridging up to 25m in length, which in one instance impinge upon the plough-ridges. The depth of the furrows is up to 0.4m. It is possible that these ridges were spade-dug.

Visited by RCAHMS (PJD) 4 May 1990

A field-system annotated 'Old Fences' is depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Kirkcudbrightshire 1852, sheet 37). Most of the field-system is shown on the current edition of the OS 1:10000 map (1979).

Information from RCAHMS (AKK) 17 March 2000.