Ruthven

NH62NW 31.01 6002 2675

The remains of about nine buildings and two small enclosures are spread across a rock-strewn piece of ground on either side of the track to Ruthven farmsteading. The buildings are generally aligned on a NE-SW axis and are much reduced with walls surviving as low grassy banks with occasional boulders. Apart from the two that are depicted as roofed on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Inverness-shire 1875, sheet xxx), the buildings are remarkable for their rounded ends and range in size from 12.3m to 19.2m in length by between 5.7m and 7.1m in breadth over banks spread to between 1.4m and 2.7m in thickness and up to 0.3m in height. Two of them are subdivided into two compartments (USN93 356, 361) and one lies within an enclosure (USN93 359). However, the two buildings depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Inverness-shire 1875, sheet xxx) are rectangular on plan and longer, measuring 22m and 24.5m in length by 5.7m and 5.4m in breadth respectively over faced-rubble walls spread to about 1.4m in thickness and 0.3m in height. Both are depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map with a porch or bedneuk extension in the middle of the SE side, which only survive as shallow depressions, although what might have been a bedneuk recess was visible in the middle of the NW side of the more northerly of the two (USN93 354).

(USN93 353-61)

Visited by RCAHMS (PJD), 19 March 1993.