Dun Mhic Raonuill

NM 814 230. On an isolated stack of rock which rises abruptly to a height of 9 m above the shore about 830 m NNE of Barrnacarry farmhouse, there are the wasted remains of an oblong dun (Fig. 67, plan).The sides of the stack are precipitous, but the summit can be reached, with some difficulty, by means of a narrow cleft on the SSW.

Reduced by stone-robbing to a low band of rubble 3 m in average width, in which five short stretches of outer facing-stones have survived in situ, the dun wall (A) encloses an area measuring 19.8 m by 10·7 m. The entrance is no longer visible, but it was presumably situated at the head of the cleft on the SSW.

The boulder-strewn foreshore to the S of the dun is traversed by two arcs of ruined walling (B, C) of widely differing character. Wall B, drawn round the base of the stack on the SW, terminates on the E against a large rocky boss, and at its NW end is overlain by a boundary wall of comparatively recent date. It is best preserved immediately to the S of the dun, where it appears as a low grass-grown bank 3'7 m thick and up to1 m in height; to the NW, however, it has been reduced to a stony scarp, while all that remains on the E is an irregular scatter of angular boulders. In all these sectors outer facing-stones can be seen protruding through the debris as shown on the plan. Without excavation it is impossible to determine whether the gap recorded by Christison (PSAS, xxiii (1888-9), 395, fig. 21) immediately below the presumed dun entrance, but now obscured, marks the position of an original gateway or is simply the result of later disturbance.

The outer work (C) consists of an exceptionally well-preserved dry-stone wall, more than 3 m thick in places, which extends for a distance of 60 m from an area of broken ground on the SE to a morass on the NW, where all traces of the wall are finally lost. Both the inner and outer faces, considerable stretches of which can still be seen, are mainly composed of massive blocks of stone, the largest measuring as much as 1'5 m in length, 0'3 m in thickness and 0·8 m in height. The entrance, which faces SW, measures 1'1 m in width internally and about I . 5 m externally; at present the passage is partially blocked by a displaced facing-stone of the SE side-wall.

A comparison of walls Band C suggests that the latter, being so much better preserved and occupying ground of lower tactical value, is of later date. Both, however, constitute formidable defensive barriers and have obviously been designed to give added protection to the dun, although in different phases of its occupation.

Adjoining wall C to the W of the entrance, and probably secondary to it, there are the fragmentary remains of a rectangular enclosure measuring at least 12'2 m in length and about 6'3 m in average width. The NW end of the enclosure has been completely destroyed, but on the SW and SE sides the enclosing wall is comparatively well preserved and measures about I' 5 m in average thickness. An entrance 1'4 m wide gives access to the enclosure at its SE end.

An isolated stretch of walling (D), situated at the foot of the stack on the NW and now represented by a low band of stony debris not more than 1'2 m in width, does not appear to serve any defensive purpose and may possibly be contemporary with the enclosure.

RCAHMS 1975, visited May 1966.

Surveyed with alidade and plane-table at 1mm:1ft. Redrawn in ink and published at the reduced scale of 1:1000 (RCAHMS 1975, fig. 67).

The oval dun standing on a rocky knoll on the E side of a large headland also lies within two outer works that cut off the approach from the landward side; both are usually interpreted as outworks to the dun, but while neither appears to make sense topographically as a free-standing fortification, the differing states of preservation hint that they do not present a unified scheme of defences with the dun. As such, it is possible that they were designed to enclose a much bigger area on the headland, the full extent of which is now lost. The dun itself is oval on plan, measuring about 20m from NNE to SSW by 11m transversely (0.02ha) within a robbed wall about 3m in thickness; several runs of outer face are visible and the entrance is on the SSW. The first of the outer ramparts is set at the foot of the knoll and extends W from outcrops at the edge of the shore until it disappears beneath a modern dyke below the SW flank of the dun. While this wall is reduced to little more than an irregular scatter of rubble with a few outer facing-stones, the outermost wall beyond it is exceptionally well-preserved, with long stretches of both inner and outer face still in place. It measures 3m in thickness and links an area of broken ground on the E to the edge of an area of bog on the W. There is an entrance midway along, immediately W of which a rectangular enclosure appears to have been butted against it. RCAHMS investigators observed that the different states of preservation of the two outer works suggested that they were of different dates, an argument that can also be extended to the dun wall, but it is difficult to establish the true function of either. Notably a modern dyke cuts off the headland on much the same line, and it it possible that the two outer walls are successive versions of the same enclosure, though the line of neither can be detected to the W of the area of bog. Such an enclosure would have cut off an area of 0.6ha.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 24 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2585