Balnalick

NH43SW 45 4390 3127

The remains of this township comprise the footings of three buildings and a limekiln. The buildings are all situated on a ridge to the SW of the present house at Balnalick. They measure between 7.3m and 15m in length and between 3m and 3.5m in breadth within grass-grown wall footings 0.3m high at most. One of them (URQ97 106) is divided into two compartments and there are traces of a third compartment or an extension at its ENE end. The smallest of the three (URQ97 108) stands on the NW side of the ridge; it has been built up at its N end to provide a level interior and the sides appear to be bowed. The limekiln stands amongst gorse scrub about 100m NW of these buildings at NH 4381 3134 (URQ97 267). Subrectangular on plan, it measures 5m from NNW to SSE by 3.6m transversely over faced rubble walls up to 0.3m high. The bowl was full of brushwood on the date of visit. There may have been another structure about 5m to the E, but this is now reduced to a pile of rubble.

The township of Balnalick is depicted on George Brown's 1808 'Plan of the Davoch of Inchbreen' (National Archives of Scotland RHP 11955). Ten buildings and two enclosures are shown, but it is not possible to identify any of them with the extant remains. The limekiln, however, does appear on Brown's map. The 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Inverness-shire 1876, sheet xxviii) depicts six roofed buildings and two enclosures on the site, and the depiction is sufficiently different from Brown's map to suggest that there had been considerable rebuilding in the intervening years. The OS Name Book describes Balnalick as 'two or three small farmsteadings grouped together, each one storey high thatched and in fair repair'. One of the buildings on the OS map can be identified on the ground (URQ97 106), but a modern house and its associated outbuildings now occupy the sites of the others.

(URQ97 106-8, 267)

Visited by RCAHMS (SDB) 9 October 1997