Harryfoothill

NS95NE 79 9821 5566 and 9811 5574

The remains of this farmstead, which may have been reused to house miners working the adjacent pit, stand in a pasture field in the angle of a bend in the Mosshat Burn, about 650m NW of Burnfoot farmsteading. There may be the remains of another building about 125m farther to the NW.

The farmstead (CSW 2980) measures 41.4m in length by 4.3m in breadth within faced-rubble walls 0.7m in thickness which stand up to 0.6m high; the walls have been partly robbed out and a later track runs through the middle of the remains. Within, there are eight compartments, two of which have been subdivided. There is a level terrace along the SSE side, onto which the entrance opens.

The possible building to the NW, of which only grassed-over banks

remain, lies at the bottom of a narrow gully on the E bank of the burn

at NS 9811 5574. No sensible measurements of these remains were possible (CSW 2979).

The 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Lanarkshire 1864, sheet xiv) depicts 'Harryfoothill' as a single building, shorter than the surviving ruins, with a well and two small enclosures, and it is described in the Name Book as 'a small farmsteading one story in height, thatched and in good repair' (ONB 1864). The 2nd edition of the map (1899) shows a longer building, with several small enclosures. It may be that the farmstead had been enlarged or rebuilt to house miners at the adjacent pit (NS95NE 80), which would explain both the number of compartments and the number of small enclosures (presumably garden plots) shown on the 1899 map. The pit was already disused by the time of the 2nd edition, and by the next revision (1910, published 1922) the building was in ruins.

(CSW 2979-80)

Visited by RCAHMS (SDB) 15 July 1994