Orcadian landscapes

UPDATE OF SITES

COMELY TANK HY54010382
Where the Comely track first skirts the shoreline a very short earthen ramp comes down. To the right of this are some thin slabs under the track. Looks at first like a wall of a cist. Not a wall because the walls along the coast here are even drystane courses. Indeed the slabs were backed up to one such - the wall has an apparent termination at the structure's RH end but it goes behind it. Against the bottom of the RH end I saw a modern rusty waterpipe of several inches diameter, though this discharges alongside not inside the flat area in front of the slabs. Here the 1:25,000 shows a well. So could it be the remains of a tank ?
COMELY CAIRN HY54040403
Passing Comely I saw some stones together at a field edge. At first I thought it was a small pile dumped there. On closer inspection they are all part of of a short earthen mound and not one of modern appearance. At the cliff edge behind it is a standing stone. Looking into the bay there is very close to shore a shallow area in front of which is a line of stones that isn't fieldwall.
CAMPSTON CAIRN HY537042 HY50SW 8
Nearer Comely than Campston this very low round "indeterminate mound", originally down as a burnt mound without reason, is an insignificant lump in the nearer corner of the field that also holds St.Peter's Kirk, and to the right of a big field boundary drain. Didn't see any of the "protruding large stones" meant to be atop it but saw what struck me as many more stones than just the slumped fieldwall alongside down the 'cliff'. To the left of the drain you might make out two boggy nausts, long disused and one partially infilled in case you wonder then what they are.
ST.PETER'S KIRK HY536042 HY50SW 2
The remains of St.Peter's Kirk are much more obvious (HY536042) at the top of the hill. Even from the shore the visible stones look uncharacteristically large for a parish church. Taking the "masonry composed of massive squared blocks" with the "build up of settlement debris" you feel the trapezoidal enclosure must surely pre-date any church. RCAHMS NMRS record HY50SW 2 says the church's position within it is uncertain and the name referenced in a "Statistical Account" is actually the present St.Ninian's Church in Deerness. You cannot get to the site from the coast owing to a very taut barbwire fence along the coast. A better bet is probably the farmtrack to Ness of Campston.
ST.PETER'S BAY HY537045 HY50SW 21
Prominent on the hill as viewed from the shore, a little further along than St.Peter's Kirk. 16m E-W by 18m, most of it is grass-covered but (at least now) higher up is bare and there are some stones on its top. Even with binoculars there is no definite shape to them. It is probably a settlement mound and there is apparently suggestion of a level platform to the south. Down at the uppermost shoreline there is at the land's edge levels like those I noted in the cliff's edge to the right of the Scapa Distillery outlet (Broch of Lingro). There is hereabouts an angle of drystane wall jutting out that may be something more than that. You cannot get to the site from the coast owing to a very taut barbwire fence along the coastline. A better bet is probably the farmtrack to Ness of Campston.RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY50SW 21 has now the results of geophysics to the south and west in 2001. Numerous anomalies indicate an extensive site, along with an arc of of ditch about 55m diameter and 6~8m wide with a break at the SE. As a result it is thought this could be a broch-type settlement.
NEVADA COTT HY433092
Passing the Scapa Distillery turnoff heading out toward Orphir you can't miss this site immediately to your right behind the small wooden cottage whose name I have given it. Originally I thought this long mound to be the furthest settlement associated with the Broch of Lingro.For most of its length it stands a couple of metres high, the road has practically sliced through one end but there doesn't seem to be a continuance on the Lingro side. It is only from the cemetery road that you can properly conceive its length. In earlier times it would have dominated this end of the Scapa valley, both from the same level and looking down from above. There was always a suspicion on my part that it might turn out to be purely natural. Then came the view from the cemetery road of hills curving round most sides and then down on what should be a fairly flat valley bottom this sticks out like a giant prostrate thumb. I imagine this would date before the Iron Age, perhaps modified natural rather than purely man-made.
LEAFEA HY231093 HY20NW 4
It was by going up a wide ditch, presently dry, knee-deep in vegatation that I reached the end of the field with the Leafea stones. From here I could fill my camera with their image. After getting back I realised that the way chosen was the worst of several to reach Leafea and Brockan (it strikes me with hindsight that the best way is likely to be not to go down the turnoff to Warebeth but instead continue along to where the Outertown road takes a sharp turn and go around the field edges at that point). The two standing stones (1 & 1.2m high) are at right angles to the coast, earthfast. Not part of the arrangement were a couple of natural boulders of which one filled the gap.The story goes that a dog unearthed human bones at the stones' base. Now the uppermost stone is part of the barb-wire fence. It is often difficult to fathom why some stones are chosen and loads of others aren't. Just behind where I stood (HY23040928) is one of decent height, either side of where ditch meets coast are another two (HY22980917,HY22990917) and I think I remember another on the way up. All these ones differ from Leafea by being the usual taller than they are broad.
BROCKAN HY231096 HY20NW 1
My first picture of Brockan I shot from the northern end of the Leafea Stones' fence. I took several more from nearer the Outertown road later but I think that the pictures will show it looks better from below. Even on CANMAP this is still down as a chambered tomb. Understandable for the size. But a partial excavation found two chambers each with a short passage leading to a common paved stone-walled enclosure (I am reminded that at least one beehive structure used to reside in Breck Farm's stackyard). So CANMORE says present thinking is a secondary broch settlement or a small Skara Brae type village. Despite, or perhaps because of, the proximity of both Warebeth and Breckness I don't quite buy it as the former.Three stones still protrude from the top. I tried several other tracks to approach it but none came much closer (it strikes me with hindsight that the best way is likely to be not to go down the turnoff to Warebeth but instead continue along to where the Outertown road takes a sharp turn and go around the field edges at that point). Looked at from the road there appears to be a possible something in the field to its left, though admittedly only a possible cropmark. There used to be a Brockan Standing Stone at HY23140987.Brockan and my suspect share the same 6-figure NGR. There is a spring next to Brockan and a well close by my suspect. About the same distance from my suspect as that is from Brockan, at HY233096, a cist with three bodies was found in a probably natural sandy knoll in 1845.
BROCH OF BRECKNESS HY225093 HY20NW 9
"Almost entirely destroyed" all that is left is visible on the eroding cliff. It may be very little compared to what was once there but there is surely value in a vertical section that gradually reveals itself without any person having to excavate it ! A watching brief by archaeologists would provide useful results in time. And it goes a long ways along the cliff, over two points of the coast. Either side of the central broch there is 20~30m of settlement, and the broch itself nearly 12m diameter. Apparently there is a slice of a chapel in there too, which I wish I had known at the time. The most obvious structures at this stage in its unveiling are slab-sided floor drains. The best way is likely to be to go past the turnoff to Warebeth and continue along to where the Outertown road takes a sharp turn and go around the field edges at that point.
DEEPDALE COTTAGE HY267118
Going back about Stromness rather than through it I came to the main Kirkwall-Stromness road and thought I had a chance to finally 'do' the Deepdale Stones. Except I still got it wrong. What I had actually spotted previously were Deepdale Cottage stones. To the left of Deepdale Cottage is a short sandy-coloured standing stone and in front of it a triangular block of the same colour. There are a one or two other stones about these of different constitution and there may be some earthwork arcing about. On the opposite side of the road at Deepdale is a solitary standing stone of a different complexion, lichen-covered like many another. None on NMRS natch. Continuing around the hill you come to a large patch of rough ground and it is off the top left corner of this that the actual Deepdale Stones are located.
BURN OF HATSTON & water works HY43481280 HY41SW 6
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY41SW 6 at HY43481280. Before leaving Kirkwall as you reach the Hatston Industrial Estate junction take the lower road till you reach the turnoff for the new pier. Beyond you see a field fence on the same side. Walk towards it and you'll see the burn going down to the shore which you now follow. It is very rough pasture with hidden holes and barely buried bits of woodwork along the way. The burn at this the beginning points straight at the middle of the mound. Then about 20m away from the edge of the mound it turns slightly to the left. What you come to is a grassy mound a couple of metres high. No features at all (though apparently it is a channel cut across the top that revealed the burnt material). RCAHMS say it is a wonder how it survives so untouched in this area, so we shouldn't grumble really. From the top I could make out a slight small ditch about the mound but felt it to be a modern development. So what took my fancy was a set of features at the point where the burn takes a turn (HY43461277), date unknown. Most of the way from Yairsay the Burn of Hatston is lined by drystane walls, no sign of a break apart from the bridge below Yairstay. But here it does intriguing things. About 9m down from a wide turf-covered bridge a slab of stone bridges the water, near the top of the walls and inset to their sides. It lays horizontally and I wonder if this is how the slab at Burn of Swannay once lay too. A metre past this the right wall turns at a right angles, straight until the end curved round a little. About 4.5-5m further on it is mirrored, except that this wall goes across the water as another wide turf-covered bridge, though of better construction than the first. Hereabouts the walls are thicker than elsewhere, for opposite where the first wall turn is lies a wall inset about 1.3m long, and this is set half-way back into the wall a scant few courses above the stream. Even though there is a chunk of concrete between the wall-turns the arrangement is definitely original with the drystane walling. Down from the mound, almost at the shore, was Saverock Souterrain (HY43681296, HY41SW 5), that Petrie had down as a broch. And the Hatston Airfield Souterrain (HY43621238, HY41SW 3) wasn't too far away. So obviously this area has always been important.
NEARHOUSE HY508068
Continue along the Hawell road and you come to a spot where a church on the hillside overlooks a tiny disused quarry. just at the end you turn tightleft at the junction. At the top of this section of road is a thriving farm with modern sheds, immense by Orkney standards. At the back right corner you can see a long mound (HY509067) of bare earth of comparable size to the fence. This is liberally covered with stones, of which many are bloody big. I have photos but this is simply tons of material dumped from somewhere else. No, my site is a rather slighter mound in the field along which the road turns again. It lies towards the upper right corner of this field. On this same side a large-scale map marks a well. Nothing thus far along the road has a NMRS.
THE HILLOCK HY361142 HY31SE 4
Going into Finstown is the road to Evie. Go out of town and you can't miss the pillbox. This sits on The Hillock (RCAHMS NMRS Record no.HY31SE 4). I spent two seasons based just outwith, whilst working on The Howe outside Stromness, and I never realised I had a broch practically on my doorstep. At the near end is a space going down to the shore. To the left is a square modern wall and from there looking across its nature was plain as a pikestaff, that familiar broch outline revealed. I went down on the shore to see if there was a nice vertical section but the lumps of tarmac sticking out a foot below the clifftop disabused me of any such notion. So I came back and followed a path over the rise of the near end that may have been the double wall. Up to the pillbox for a looksee. To the shoreside of this are the visible wall remnants and the 'cell' revealed by a minor dig relatively recently. You can make out some passages and an entrance. There is even a little exposed walling. It was very dangerous getting photos because the grass hides holes, a couple of pieces of wire-frames and abundant nettles. Gingerly letting myself down to the passage floor I was always finding myself reaching out for grass holds that then revealed nettles. The walling you can see from the pillbox is a scant course or two high but when you are down in the passage looking back the cell shows itself several courses high owing to that excavation.
WHITECLEAT HY51110852
As you go down the hill to Tankerness Mill you come to various Whitecleat buildings and when you reach the end of this complex on the other side is a new house. Below this is a track and sometime between mid-afternoons June 7th and 9th someone broke through the top of a structure. The aperture is 0.7m square internally and at least 1.4m deep (one metre down there is water), at the bottom are two stones and soil from the collapse. Inside is almost five-sided because the lower 0.8m of the top side is a large grey stone with an obtuse angle or two stones 0.8m and 0.5m long closely fitting, the upper courses consist of drystane walling. Down at the other end the appearance is squared off. I thought perhaps the black stones could be bedrock but there is the same kind of stone at the bottom of the other, straight, sides. The drystone roof at either end seems to mimic their shape, the uphill end being corbelled for its top 0.4m whilst the downhill is square on and 0.3m deep. At the bottom end the roof projects 0.6m over the wall and at the top end perhaps slightly less. The big stones only start appearing 0.6m from the top. As to the sides' composition one has the drystone walling and then fragmented black stones, the other I'm only sure of the drystone walling above. The bottom side is all drywalling and ?could be secondary to block off a larger extent. So perhaps this is a very late usage for a Neolithic or Bronze Age something. I assume that it will be filled in soon. Though I do think it likely to be a wellspring on the O.S.(in the Neolithic the Loch of Tankerness being only 1m deep was much further away than it now appears) the well marked on the map is slightly down from the corner of the field whereas this structure is on the track outside of it. But perhaps when the new house was built this side the field boundary changed to suit ?? Went back again to clarify the position and this is definitely the O.S. map well, the upper edge of the track being the old field boundary. The stone from on top has joined its brethren in the waters and this has allowed a better view of the uphill section.
LOCH OF MESSIGATE HY519073
Down the Mine Howe road and continue in a straight line to the coast, turn left and by The Brig a "standing stone fence" lies across the way (HY51940731). First time I did not see all five stones. Two stones are on the field edge, the one nearest the edge sticking only a foot above the ground and so obscured by grass.One of those down on the shore is a pointed curve literally only inches above the sands. All of which confirms the alignments' antiquity. The first three and the last had perforations. But whilst the big field edge stone had a barbwire going through its hole the one furthest away, with two vertical holes not aligned, was only knee-height (this has a short stone at right-angles in front of it). This fence felt ancient still, the shore stones solidly buried by the literal sands of time. Up at the field edge I saw that I was by the Loch of Messigate, with derelict farm bulidings that I take to be Newbigging to its left. The loch (which like most of our lochs would be deemed a lochan on the Scottish mainland) has a line of stones going across it barely above water (HY51890733) so that surely the drystane wall is rather more than the usual two centuries old. Back on CANMAP I notice the field boundary is shown either side of the water but not this continuation of the wall, strangely. Down on the shore again, not many yards further on and so still below loch level, I come across my next feature (HY519074). Parallel to the field edge (I guess) is a sandstone slab 0.5m high and 0.8m long, and midway along its lower edge is a square cut 0.3m long and about six inches deep. The other side of this a smaller sandstone slab lies across its left edge. Beyond the front of the notched slab what looks to be a narrow lined channel level about with the shore heads off to The Brig. A square-cut drain ?? On my last visit I found the channel to go out to at least 11.2mand to vary between 0.4-0.5 across , with a full width varying between 0.7-0.9m. Other stones in the general area, such as the one previously noticed, may be connected but there are too many of these scattered about to discern any possible pattern. The channel has become filled in and so if it was ever a water channel then it too must surely pre-date the Loch of Messigate at its present size. Also it bears no relation in location or alignment with either Newbigging or Messigate.
THE ROUND HY50280630
As you come up to the Mine Howe turnoff from the Kirkwall direction to the left is a narrow track going to a group of buildings (cottage, caravans etc.) The Round. Near the end are a pair of stones on the track's upper verge 3.7m apart, fairly slender and pointy. The nearer one has 0.35m stones close about it but they appear to be modern and not old packing. Like Leafea they are on a line with one another. There are no signs of use and they are rather further apart than useful for old field gates -perhaps these flatface-aligned stone pairs were for the precursor of the present 'Orkney gate'. Both are 0.1m across at the top, the left is 1.8x0.35x0.1m and that at the right 1.7x0.3x0.2m.I have often wondered about The Round and Round Howe being in the same vicinity, though seperated by Swartbreck and Eildon. Did the former somehow end up lending its name to the latter ? Is the rise on which The Round sits a settlement mound, and if so is it the original Round Howe with its name being appropriated by archaeologists for the "pseudo-broch" ??
MILL SAND HY513077
To be found no great distance from the section of road that parallels Mill Sand , at the end away from Tankerness Mill . There are so many standing stones incororated into fences or drystane walls that it is difficult to say which ones may originally have stood alone , and it is my feeling we could have real stone rows in Orkney and be unaware of the fact ! Thiis 'alignment' could always be the remains of a barrier , but these are usually much shorter and encumbered by the remains of barbed-wire . The gatepost could well have originally been a standing stone , like many such possibles it has more than one hole/pit . Through the hole on this one can be lined up the two stones standing in the sea and an end of the small eyelet further seaward . In the gatepost picture you can still make out the two stones amidst the intervening vegetation ! Visiting this region at low tide to gain more on the Loch of Messigate I was surprised at Mill Sand by another black stone in the alignment. Between the 'gatepost' and the first of the tall ones this slab presents 0.2m above the sands and sits athwart 0.6m. There appears to be packing ahint it and/or perhaps another shiny slab top agin fractionally below shore level.
STANEY HILL TOMB HY316159 HY31NW 51
Even CANMAP is ever so slightly misleading, for the fence that was my guide is actually smack opposite the Grimeston signpost on the Stoneyhill road below the Staney Hill standing stone. The two tumuli in the first field (Feolquoy barrows HY3174155) do have a few nice stones on the surface. There is a tumulus in the field opposite the one behind them (probable barrow Feolquoy mound HY317157). Only I didn't notice it because my attention was taken by the immense stones in the field I passed through. Felt as if they were all over the field, like the fallen remains of a giant castle. Some kind of rocky outcrop I guess. And on the surface loose foot-deep slabs left over from the giant's dominoes. Surely at some stage nature here has been added to by man. One of the slabs someone may have thought to remove as it has a smooth-bored hole about an inch diameter that has to be fairly modern.Unfortunately I was unable actually to go into the field with the tomb as both sides of the fence are heavily guarded with electricity. Actually if I'd had time and courage there was a spot some way down the hill that I could have snuck through. Several decent areas of stonework revealed. This tomb is an heck of a big 'un and it actually goes through into the next-door field - the NGR is in the field at right. RCAHMS NMRS no. HY31NW 51 the wasted remains of a long chambered cairn that would, if it only has one stalled chamber, be the largest recorded in Orkney at 67m long by a maximum of 27m at the SE end. C It is horned and may have a concave facade. The latter is unrecorded for Orkney
KNOWES OF TROTTY HY341175 HY31NW 32
It is a bit of a yomp. Went on a guided walk with the Orkney Archaeological Trust. Because the area covered by these 11 cairns is now under management (hence the falling through of funding for further excavations this year) by agreement you can no longer reach here through the Netherhouse byre but have to go the long way around via the Howe Road. The way through the heath is a ways past the Howe Farm turnoff and on your right. The rough and intermittent path leading to the 'cemetery' isn't signposted so it is fortunate that they stand out. Owing to all the moss and heather it is a very bouncy walk -thankfully duckboards have been placed along the worst patches of the swampy bits now.They aren't much to look at - I would have been content to take a group picture at the first suitable place and gone back, myself. The cairns were constructed using natural drumlins as platforms. Though many were excavated by 'barrow-diggers' only the one with the golden discs was in any sense recorded. The 2002 excavation by Jane Downes, our guide, besides numerous cists in one of the cairns revealed in a flat area between two of the cairns some kind of building - perhaps a mortuary structure. In the Bronze Age the settlements were tiny and usually within a kilometre or two (so look about you if you visit). I think that from here you can make out the Knowes of Trinnawin tumuli on the west side of Hindera Fiold. From the cairn nearest Netherhouse at one spot two of the hills almost form a continuous flat skyline.
CAPERHOUSE HY318171
Up past Fursbreck Pottery I took a left onto the minor road that wends its way to Ballarat House.These are a pair of flatface-aligned stones at HY318171, the left-hand side of the road short of where a disused pit is shown on O.S. and before it turns to Caperhouse. Not as slim as the ones at The Round but similarly placed. The distance between them is 3.6m, both have elaborate settings maybe 0.4m deep and like the standing stones in the Yesnaby area, they seem to be about the same height and are similarly shaped though not mirror images. The tape measure on the LH stone bottomed inside its setting at 1.9m but the other I only got to 1.3m on the outside down to the present ground surface. The former stone is 0.4m wide with a stone setting 0.7m wide extending 0.3m in front and 0.2m behind. Forgot to measure the depth of either stone. The RH stone is a little wider at 0.6m, the stone stting is 0.2m behind but against the outer edge are several small slabs on end like the top of a drystane wall. It struck me that perhaps such pairs of stones were the termini of the very first field boundary walls, representing a gateway before we moved to the use of permanent gates and the usual orientation of stones used as gateposts. At The Round (HY503063) the track edge along which the stones lay could similarly be the line of a very low wall. Also coming naturally to mind was Leafea (HY231093). Here there isn't anything like a wall and it would have to have vanished before the first record. Also the stones are much closer. But I may have something - could these arrangements have been of the same age as the 'standing stone fences' and a similarly symbolic style of space management. Around the bend there is another set of these 'gateposts' that might rebut my idea. Only the feel is totally different, and try as I might I was unable to find any settings for these.
MAESQUOY HY311165
Up past Fursbreck Pottery I took a left onto the minor road that wends its way to Ballarat House. At Caperhouse I took another left. Coming towards Furso I was on the lookout on the same side for several tumuli but only saw modern agricultural mounds. One in particular (NMRS record no. HY31NW 53) has a sandpit on the top with a few stones poking up. Couldn't find it ; apparently did but my map addition proved false. Thought I detected it in a couple of stones in summer vegetation beside the road at HY311165 and didn't realise my error until my return. These were in front of Maesquoy to the right of a wooden direction sign for Furso itself. The nearer one, 0.54m high and 0.44m wide narrowing from a knee to 0.2m, is about 30 degrees offset from a road alignment. 0.4m away is a taller stone, 1.2m by 0.3m, that nearly parallels the road. They are alone as far as I was able to ascertain.
ST.NICHOLAS CHURCH HY510006 HY40SW 14
If I had read the latest on the NMRS I could have done more there. Somehow I only took in the bit about an earlier church on the hill, for the arc of protruding stones on the mound's summit outside of the church wall sounds intriguing. Even so it was fairly obvious to me that the place had a pre-ecclesiastical significance with the later church site (if perhaps not the original) being placed beside the mound rather than on it and continuing outwith the existing walls. In Orkney several religious buildings were built on or by brochs for example. Not far away lies an archaeologically recent bridge with a no dumping sign. The water on the seaward side was fair honking, perhaps related to the black stuff encountered on the shore of Howes Wick as I had walked between the howe and kirk headlands. Beneath it on the other side, and at right angles to it, is a smaller and more primitive bridge HY508009. This bridge is on one end of the newer bridge and at the other is a very tall drystane wall. Taken together these two items lead me to believe the mound behind them could well be settlement related.RCAHMS NMRS No. HY50SW 15. There has been a church at the present site since 1570, it has been rebuilt once. It is believed that there was a previous church on the mound where part of the graveyard lies as various drystane walls have shown up and a Celtic cross-slab has been found. This mound extends well beyond the churchyard and was originally a settlement. A ring of stones protrudes at the summit HY51010065 in the field to the north of the church. Last century 40 trailer-loads of stones, including many red ones, were removed from HY51010065 and dumped on the shore at HY50880075. Amongst these was a redstone block with 6 cupmarks which has since disappeared.
CASTLE HOWE HY514003 HY50SW 13
Crossing the coastal fields to Castle Howe the vegetation was tall and rank, making this is the worst time of the year to investigate such a ruinous or fragmentary site. I never learn. Couldn't really tell what was underfoot, seemed to be channels and/or ruts of some type as I neared the hill. Coming up my feet encountered a multitude of lumps and bumps and I appeared to be climbing over different levels on the hill, putting me strangely in mind of Wideford Hill Cairn. What a struggle to reach the top it had been. Be very careful going about the summit still. Once there I found it took a while to tell the chamber wall from the outer protection of the excavator's wall. Rather disappointing. The inner area looked like a rockfall and I wasn't aware of seeing any steps at the time. Mindst you the modern wall isn't weathering well either. Just about worth it still.RCAHMS NMRS No. HY50SW 13 though it occupies a typical broch site shows no evidence of circularity and so is classified as a promontory fort. A member of the clergy excavated a 'domestic structure' on the top from 1929-31 and then built a 1m high square wall about it afterwards. There were two structures above one another, of which only the lower was certainly prehistoric. This lower chamber was D-shaped with a floor 2.6m below ground level (reached by steps) and walls 2m high. Its entrance and that of the modern protective wall are held in common at the west.
FIDDLERHOUSE HY25771588
On my way up the hill to Via Mound I had noticed, on looking my right, a field with a building next to a standing stone (unfortunately an illusory combination) and a close-knit standing stone pair in a field wall. So in spite of changeable weather I went for a looksee. They stand at HY25771588. They abut but the one on the right is rather loose. This has been the result of a recent knock, especially as its right end is in line with what is either a blocking pair or a stone setting 0.4m high. Both standing stones are 0.4m wide but the one on the left is 1.3m high and the other 1.1m. Why the query about the stone setting. Because the stones at right angles to the pair are before them. The LH of the ?blocking pair is shorter but thicker, 0.3m by 0.1m against 0.6m by 0.05m). A boulder fills most of the space to there left and could have arrived there only recently. So perhap this area originated as something different. Almost finished measuring when it bucketed it down. So I waited until it eventually went. Whilst I waited I looked up and saw on the summit what seemed like a square arrangement of standing stones amidst many modern stone pillars in fencing. Possibly another trick of the point of view. Then I chanced to look to the right and saw several more standing stones along the line of the hill. Suddenly it struck me that this was a mirror of the sites I call Breck spine and track near the Mine Howe complex. Hmm.. When I got back home I looked again for something on the building in the field between the pair and the 'standing-stone fence'. Instead I found out that this Fiddlerhouse field is probably the site of a barrow as no less than six cists have come from here. All are reported removed (4 about HY25821581, one at 25821575 and the other at 25831582. Plus a pile of ashes from 25901570. Makes me think a little of the Breck urns). Is there a connection with my that day's find you may wonder.
ROSEBANK QUARRY HY273285
After passing the Knowes of Lingro and passing near the Knowe of Crustan, as the road descends you come to a disused quarry (always a place to look for discarded standing stones if accessible by car). Opposite this I found another of 'my' flat-face aligned stone pairs HY27292850. Below the brow of a hill seems a typical situation for these. The more of them that I see the more certain I am that they mark the boundary of larger areas in Orkney. This one overlooks Birsay beautifully. Though both are 1.3x0.6m they aren't really a mirror image - the one on the right is rectangular apart from a bump at the top, the one on on the left a severely 'pecked' utility knife shape. They stand 3.3m apart with the gap bridged by an 'Orkney gate' as described earlier. I'd love to plot all this type of gateway on a map sometime, carve up Orkney prehistory stylee.
HACKLAND HY27691936
Taking the B9057 west out of Dounby I found down at Hackland a solitary stone in the field alongside the road, no nearby quarries or outcrops or structures to explain its presence. The stone is 1.1m long by 0.5m high by 0.6m wide, one end manages not to be quite square and the other is simply irregular.
KNOWES OF LINGRO HY284290 HY22NE 21
3 mounds between 35' and 45' across and 3-4.5' high, all showing signs of excavation.I always prefer to climb over gates, but this one is chained anyway. The downhill mound has a scrape in the top, though this could be rodent damage (rabbits are rodents too). At the top of the hill are the other two mounds. That on the left is another disappointment. Though there are more patches of bare earth this could still be the results of animal, rather than human, excavators. Looking to the last mound from this one I was heartened to see a few stones protruding from the far side. Still it came as a very pleasant shock to find that these were part of a cist. The two uphill slabs are virtually complete, giving a size of 1.2x0.8m. The longer slab points fairly straight uphill, so a N-S orientation I think. These two slabs are only slightly out of joint, the cause in the long ago perhaps a 0.6x0.1m stone showing not far above the lower end. I saw no sign of the other end slab but 0.35m of the other long slab can still be seen standing up 0.2m. Soil and grass comes maybe halfway up the inside of the cist. Coming off the mound HY284290 you could see the roundness of it and there is a ditch. At first I thought this too curved around the mound, but then it went over to the corner of a drystane wall - perhaps it is a robber trench ? However further down the road there is a ridge going across the hill. Could it and the ditch both be part of the site, a demarcation about the site ? I do feel there is more going on here than just those three mounds, a barrow cemetery would be luverly.
LINGRO STONE HY28452894
Before I reached the gate below the Knowes of Lingro my eyes were taken roadside by a standing stone and setting. A mini s.s. at only 0.9x0.17x0.1m, though probably extending underground which would make it even slimmer. Modern ?? Made me wonder if some bigger stone had been removed at some stage - this day I saw several modern concrete pillars in similar associations, passing curious. Like Via this setting is in front of the stone. The visible base of the standing stone is level with its top. Both standing stone and the abutting stone (0.45m long) are at right angles to the road, and then a stone 0.5m long is parallel to it. 0.47m from the abutting stone what I read to be one end of the setting is mostly buried - what shows a mere 5cm above the grass is 0.2m long. Underfoot you can feel the stones of a wall beyond the setting.
OYCE OF QUINDRY ND436925
I am not surprised no-one has logged it before because it's in a tidal inlet ! A broad stone, large enough to be seen from the road above. From about 200m away I'd guess it at 4-5' high. It may have had a far smaller stone to its right, difficult to tell with the heavy mist about. Oh, you'll want to know where it is in case the tide does come up to it. Reaching a gate where you can look straight to Lyrawall on the other side of the Oyce and the stone is to the left and this side of the beck that runs through the Oyce.Another day, coming from Kirkhouse I followed the shore that side of the Oyce of Quindry to seek out the stone. Coming to the Oyce of Quindry itself all of substance I could make out along the inlet was a big lump I had already seen through the binoculars. This resolved itself to a mass of seaweed over a boulder. Not quite as impressive or distinct as it had seemed on the day of the mist. As I neared it I could further see that it was a stone rather than a natural boulder. It was only as I came up to the end (albeit on the opposite shore) and passed by that I saw at least a long straight edge and made it out as not a broad stone but a standing stone leaning over at an acute angle.
SORQUOY aka PAPLEY ND469914 ND49SE 3
Coming out of St. Margarets Hope take the Eastside road down all the way the crossroads and pass over to the Wheems Hostel road. The fence beyond Sorquoy carries on either side of the road, the stone is incorporated into the barb-wire fence of the field on your left. Meet grandad. 4.4m high, 0.8m wide, 0.45-0.55m thick, with some packing at the bottom.Lest you think size is important I should point out that the shore below here is like an open-cast mine for standing stones - why quarry when you can simply lift them from the ground, it's comprehensively littered with stones of all sizes above the storm beach.
KIRKHOUSE CAIRN ND470909 ND49SE 16
Heavily quarried cairn 17x10m with an upright slab 0.9x0.6m orientated NE/Sw within. There are two slabs on the west margin of which one is fairly recent. Not a burial place. Shows signs of re-use, most likely as a kelp-kiln. Below St. Peter's Church is a storm beach of large stones of all shapes. Even above the shore there are many, increasing in frequency as you progress to Kirk Ness. You think of standing stones being quarried and shaped but here they are, like an open-cast mine for megaliths of all shapes and sizes. Perhaps this is why the Sorquoy Stone is so big, not importance, purely material to hand. Such an abundance marks this area as mucho importante surely. Near the beginning a relative few stones are upright, including some about a depression in a rise ND472908. Despite the orthostats Kirkhouse Cairn is, as I surmised when I saw it, not for the dead.
THE WART aka HOXA HILL ND433935 ND49SW 4
RCAHMS NMRS record no. ND49SW 4 is a much reduced round cairn, probably of a tripartite chamber design. Diameter 9.7m, on or ringed by a 21m diameter platform about 0.4m high that is itself edged by a low stony bank presently with a spread of 4m. There is now a rough modern wall about the hollow at the centre. It can be reached by reached by two slightly different routes. After my experience I would say to take the track that goes up the RH side of Roeberry House and past the quarry. The one I took was what appeared a more direct route further down, a fraction past Roeberry farm. Climbing over the rope-tied metal gate the farmtrack goes halfway up the hill where it becomes obscured by pasture. At the beginning of the second field was a stream outlet fallen into disarray, the dark brown stones marking it out as mediaeval or later. The stream and its walling ran across the hill to come to a halt near the corner here, well seperated from the fieldwall itself. The ?culvert (what I still think of as bridges myself) points downhill (perhaps aligned with The Wart), so my description is possibly incorrect. There are two large slabs across the top and the nearer has a large-ish semicircle out of the edge. A slab on the left has a small circular hole. Taking a second look at the arrangement I wonder if the slabs aren't fallen orthostats. Maybe the ?culvert is a water tank or something. So unlucky to see it in this state. In explanation I now see a well marked on the map further up the field on the wall side. This field where you can only sense the ruts of the farmtrack I can also feel stones, the remains of a wall or the hardpack of the track I suppose. At the top of the field I had to slip gingerly over the barbwire-fence at the extreme corner where there is a slight rise to effectively reduce the height that vital few inches. Here's where it got tricky because of an expanse of gorse directly ahead. Tried a few ways to pass amongst the shrubbery but only succeeded in getting everything below the knees completely soaked. Quite a few stones in the area, making me consider whether this actually was my target. No. Eventually had to give in and go round to the right. Here I came upon the disused quarry, continuing to get damp the while. Above the lip I saw an earth section with some small stones that might just possibly represent a former structure here if not simply my wild imaginings. At the top end of the quarry is the farmtrack I should have taken. Visible and dry ! My thoughts were that The Wart would be gone or under cover or not up to much. Certainly hard to find. But there stood the chambered cairn exactly where the map showed it, smack behind the triangulation pillar. A stone cairn with a circular wall incorporating slabs (I noticed a void under one at the left) and a slab coming towards the centre from the right (the interior was excavated down to floor level). There is a platform about it which seems deeper from behind owing to the building of a water tank (whose wooden superstructure looks like a very fancy bird hide). There are stones on the platform (I didn't spot a rough modern wall about the central depression so I hope it isn't the one I saw ;-), stones behind it and stones in the gorse. There must be something going on besides a quarry and the cairn site.
KIRK NESS (MOUND) ND47389117 ND49SE 19
The next rise along from Kirkhouse Cairn is another Kirk Ness mound "locally believed to be ancient". A single stone sticks out of the top visibly. If one boundary is the Kirk Ness Dyke just beyond then the other boundary is likely to be where a brown standing stone marks the corner of a field.
KIRK NESS DYKE ND474912 ND49SE 32
Just beyond the coastal Kirk Ness mound I found a deep straight channel coming to the coast, where it is 'sealed' by drystane walling at ND47439119. To me it screamed vallum. Though I think of it as V-shaped because I had to through the tape measure out to get the full depth the sides were too steep for me to risk going down alone. As it is now it is 4m across by 2.5m high and there are stones along the top. If the Kirk Ness Dyke is one boundary of whatever the mound is then a brown standing stone I'd passed already was likely marking the other. Having another site incorrectly placed by me I looked for it by climbing over a drystane wall field boundary using more than adequate set of stiling stones. Where the dyke turns a bed of yellow flag, not in bloom, would seem to mark the vanished loch's edge. So did the dyke (described in NMRS as drystone dyke boundary and cru) seperate the mound from the loch, keep the mound within, both or neither ?
POINT OF BUTTQUOY HY244283 HY22NW 13
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY22NW 13 includes several different types of site on the Point of Buttquoy opposite the Brough of Birsay, mostly mounds. Today there are three mounds left basically: 1/'A' at HY24462835 has many stones covering the top but most are from a sheepfold and have become inextricably mixed, 2/'B' is at HY24372833, 3/'C' at HY24432826. The first mound is at the top of the stone-walled field in which the Knowe of Buttquoy and frankly is a damn sight more interesting. I wouldn't have identified it from CANMORE if I hadn't matched it with the NGR from the teeny-tiny circle that must be the circular sheepfold. Muddled up as the stones may be I still wish I could have found the way in - there must be one ! Don't remember seeing the second mound but the third is in the field next door to the brough side.
KNOWE OF VERRON HY231198 HY21NW 22
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY21NW 22 is a probable broch 66' NS x75' EW x5'8"high, the top excavated early. Built over a midden containing broch-style pottery. Two structures were found in the coastal exposure, the later one poorly preserved. The earlier one was sub-rectangular or oval with a flagged floor, internal fittings and a large hearth. It was in the later one, with its paved floor and probable flue, that peat ash and metalworking remains were found - the vitrified base of a possible furnace was stolen before the limited 2001 dig.I harboured slight doubts of its status when I was there too. It is in a similarly precarious position to the Broch of Borwick at Yesnaby but without the wall height to keep you out. As I came to the broch remains all I saw was a short grass mound, and in the modern-times excavated cliff edge I could see a gallery wall sticking out. The 'back' of the site is well protected by a sharp deep sea inlet to the cliffs, calling to mind the Brough of Bigging in Yesnaby. There are traces of early diggings when you are on the broch (even on the grassy top I was careful). This I found out about back home but this doesn't tell you about the square pit there, so could it have been revealed not long ago ? Smallish relatively deep slab-lined square pit and stones surrounding the top. Exquisite. Nearer the cliff edge there are other areas of stone I could make nothing of, could find not even the slightest viewpoint to make them worth a photo. Looking over the cliff at the recorded excavation is a vicarious thrill. I could see the slabs of a rectangular structure and I thought there was something alongside. I could also see the edges of black material coming through the cut, placed there after the exploratory excavation of the eroding section. The weather still being fine and dry I gingerly crept down onto the cliff exposure using some of the bigger stones as lightly as possible in order to disturb nothing. I had hoped from down here that the nondescript stone scatters above might show something but still no. You can still see some of the midden material on the 'floor'. Looking from left to right there's the slab-sided structure, the seeming outline only of another structure, some of the gallery wall sticking out (as is often the case with these cliff-eroding sites) and then further up the cliff face a couple of spaced small protruding boulders (including a well-rounded ovoid) that gave the appearance of being the ends of a 'cupboard' or niche.
LINNAHOWE HY233201 HY22SW 17
'The Castle' was an old structure that has left behind a detail-less spread of stones in an extensive mound. A silage pit dug through one end uncovered no evidence of walls amongst the stones but did find ashes and old bones. Up past Skaill Church take a left at the very next junction, a farm road that takes three sides of a square that brings it back to the proper road again. On the first side is the farm track down to Lenahowe. Here is the Linnahowe Mound just as advertised by the NMRS, a long prominent mound occupying most of an enclosure, many stones revealed by the pit but nothing resembling any kind of structuring. I only saw a few stones in the undug bit, nothing you could make anything of in the slightest.
NEWAN TOMB HY27102777 HY22NE 22
RCAHMS NMRS No. HY22NE 22 is probably a stalled cairn of the Orkney-Cromarty type, 48' diameter x4' high in 1946 and 14.3m NNE/SSW by 10.6m and 1m in height in 1981. 2.8m ESE/WNW pointing central chamber probably shown by two slabs, one 0.55m long barely visible at the SE and the other at the NW 0.9m long projecting 0.35m. Third, non-earthfast slab on SW side. Reported in 1967 as perhaps recently repositioned. Several large slabs that used to be lying against the fence I did not see on my visit. The first records note three upright slabs. Coming out of Birsay village take the A966 and go down the Vinbrake turn. The Stanerandy Tumulus lies in a field to the left and very soon the road hangs a right. Instead continue onto the farmtrack at the bend. At a house it turns left again, leave your car here if you have not already done so. The Newan cairn lies up by the field fence of the second field from here but you have to go halfway round the outside to reach it as the barbwire is taut and just too high to go over. Where that side of the field meets the track is a standing stone. A little further along the field boundary is another standing stone that points at an angle. It aims straight for the cairn (one of those little anomalies - the place Newan is actually the other side of the Stanerandy Tumulus f.k.a. Stanerandy Stones). Go around the second field edge and there is an 'Orkney gate', lying down across the farmtrack at the time of my visit, where you can see a disused quarry.From this field corner I made my entrance. Still the site disguises herself as a plain grass mound. Only coming closer to do you see a few small stones scatttered around the base . Once on top more is exposed, pattern emerges. Looking on the fence side (the mound doesn't go to the fence itself) there is a stone 0.8x0.6m with an orthostat 0.5x0.1m sticking a fraction out of the ground to its top left, and this must be the 'chamber' referred to. To the other side of this is a roughly ring-shaped collection of stones 1.6x1.8m the most obvious of which is 0.8x0.3m. Possibly part of this are two apparent orthostats to the direct left at right-angles to each other, like sides of a cist (0.5m along the shorter edge) maybe.
STANERANDY STONES a.k.a. TUMULUS HY267276 HY22NE 15
RCAHMS NMRS record HY22NE 15 now considered to be a barrow into which stones were later inserted , and of the two latter only the stump of one remains (there are three definite barrows at HY275277) Coming up from Birsay village take the A967 until the Vinbrake junction and then take that. Cornfield right to the very edge, so a closer look will have to wait several months. The wheat being tall you can only see the tumulus in two places. Fortunately the views being at right-angles to each other partially compensates. Closest to is at the corner of the field behind a Nissen hut, with a big fencepost to rest the camera on - no-one objected at the time to my going to that point. The other view, about twice the distance, is after the road turns left. Though you can see it most of the way going down towards Newan (Newan Chambered Cairn is confusingly not here but beyond Stanerandy near a disused quarry on the hill) look out for a pair of flatface-aligned stones and between there and the fence above Newan and you are looking straight across at it.
CLOUDUHALL STANDING STONE ND43538957 ND48NW 1
From Clouduhall Cairn I went to the left across the field downhill to the stone, 8'2" high and 4'6" at its widest part. It appears to sit in a hollow and have an annular ditch in close proximity as shown by the ring of darker green grass. I am minded on of the Comet Stone and 'my' Grieves Cottage site (though the circle is far tighter here). Nearing it I see a large boulder to my right. Hidden amongst the grass I think I make out another such boulder, probably a fraction smaller, just downhill of the stone. At the Clouduhall standing stone itself I cannot see a stone setting. It has a small bulbous bit a little above the summer vegetation, too low for a shoulder and not sticky-out enough for a hip.
CLOUDUHALL CAIRN ND43498958 ND48NW 3
RCAHMS NMRS record no. ND48NW 3, a heavily robbed cairn, is 18m diameter by 1m high from an original height of maybe 1.2-1.5m. The likely entrance is shown by a depression at the east, and the flagged passage was lined to a height of 4' over half its length. Near the centre a flooring of square slabs was reminiscent of a roofless cist. An actual cist discovered at the foot of a stone about 3m north of the entrance has been left in situ. The three stones in the NW arc are now believed to have been thrown up during roadworks. From St. Margaret's Hope I went south and took the far end of the Herstonroad, which is marked Herston/Sandwick. It lies on the left not far down the first leg. Virtually at the fence was a 0.7x0.5x0.3m boulder that appeared definitely shaped, not sub-rectangular but with several straight edges - anthropologists have nature v. nurture and we have geology v. anthropology. The circular depression at the top I worked out to be 5.5x4.4m internally and you can walk around it. Inside it I could feel stones underfoot and it felt like there were stones beneath the feet over all the rest of the mound too. The rest of the visible ones were about the depression though, at the west another boulder 0.4x0.4x0.3 and to the east another three of which one was 0.3x0.4x0.3. In front of the three was a rectangular area of excavation 1.6x0.9m. In the 0.6m deep vertical section I only saw a few small stones embedded in the soil, nothing to look at. Went around downside of the mound and then uphill till I felt I was at the base. Here the mound loomed over me to at least head height. Once back home I read it is a metre high presently, so either I got it wrong or perhaps it is built on something else.
TOWER HILL HY469095-6
Coming down to 'Inganess beach' (the Sand of Wideford) on the section of road between the reservoir track and the farm of Inganess looking to the left is a familiar broch shape. Further down looking back uphill the three elements resolve themselves into several side by side mounds with earth exposed. These could well be the two or three low tumuli Petrie Notes near Towerhill (in one of which a 1.7m cist held a crouched burial) though they are the same distance from Inganess farm.

WANDERINGS UPDATE

May 10th 2004 ST.PETER'S BAY
Once again I had to wonder about the fact that almost all of the lumps and hollows alongside the Deerness road (mostly on the RH side strangely enough) are not indicated on CANMAP. It is difficult to think that none of those bowls of slabs/stones (including modern dumped material admittedly), no unremarked mounds nor any of the raised tracks and geometric ridges, are of any consequence. Instate a few and you could make a case for a distinct region all the way from, say, Craw Howe and The Five Hillocks to the three howes (Round,Long,Mine) and Breck Farm. So it felt to me anyway. On the right-hand side of the road as you come from Kirkwall up to the turnoff for Mine Howe is a small derelict structure. In the field to its right several mounds were surveyed in the 1960s and a few excavated, even the largest at 10m producing little of note. Recently the field has been ploughed up. By the left-hand fence there is now an area of blackened soil about 13m by 4m (HY504059). About the same distance from where this ends along the bottom fence is a rough ploughed-up region that resembles nothing so much as the distraught remnant of some brick-built house (HY503058). It is about 13m wide along the fence and goes up the hill for approximately 37m. Unfortunately the red soil does not appear to be brick. Both soilmarks are of distinctly regular shape. I later took a bare minimum of photos in order not to feel elitist towards what were possibly mediaeval remains.Close by the structure's far left corner is a solitary standing stone (HY504059) and there are actually several mounds in this field also. Looking across you can see the two small buildings of Brymire, and between here and The Five Hillocks at HY493067 a placename Sandy Howes (HY498063) is shown on the larger-scale CANMAP. Unfortunately the name is all we have. If I had gone down the farmtrack past Campston I could have crossed fields to my intended sites. From here St.Peter's Kirk resembles the rectangular floor of a WWII structure grassed over and the settlement mound a small hill not much of anything. But I wished to avoid any over-zealous farmer and along the coast was nearer to them. Also I saw that beween the Comely farmtrack and a carpark at the bottom of the hill I'd marked from NMRS map a mound with possible cist slabs (HY540037). Couldn't spot it from the roadside. Figured it might be closer to the cliff. Never did find it by either route. Briefly considered popping over again to Dingieshowe Broch but wanted to make the most of the light in case it faded early. Went behind the car park and along the shore. First bit of interest provided by what looks like an antediluvian wall of black stone. Usually this kind of object heads off straight into the sea, mostly underwater, but this arcs shorebound around the coastline for several metres before turning sharply landwards. The base is most likely natural, close to ground and well heeled into the surface. But it appears co-opted for man's use in some prior time, topped with rhomboid slabs of the same rock close packed on end (those that survive) like the armouring of some antediluvian beastie but at right-angles to the line of the 'wall'. Where the Comely track first skirts the shoreline a very short earthen ramp comes down. To the right of this are some thin slabs under the track (HY54010382). Looks at first like a wall of a cist. Not a wall because the walls along the coast here are even drystane courses. Indeed the slabs were backed up to one such. Against the bottom of their RH end I saw a rusty waterpipe of several inches diameter. Here the 1:25,000 shows a well. So could it be the remains of a tank ? Passing Comely I saw some stones together at a field edge (HY54040403). At first I thought it was a small pile dumped there. On closer inspection they are all part of of a short earthen mound and not one of modern appearance. At the cliff edge behind it is a standing stone. Looking into the bay there is very close to shore a shallow area in front of which is a line of stones that isn't fieldwall. Now I could clearly see three targets. The best one I took to be one of my targets (though at the wrong end of the field) except it was only an outcrop of very large boulders. Turned out that the actual "indeterminate mound" (HY537042) was an insignificant lump in the nearer corner of the field that also holds St.Peter's Kirk, to the right of a field boundary drain. Didn't see any protruding slabs atop it but many more stones than just the slumped fieldwall alongside down the 'cliff' . The remains of St.Peter's Kirk are much more obvious (HY536042) at the top of the hill. Even from the shore the visible stones look uncharacteristically large for a parish church. Taking the "masonry composed of massive squared blocks" with the "build up of settlement debris" you feel the trapezoidal enclosure must surely pre-date any church. Equally prominent on the hill, a little further along, is my last target (HY537045). Most of it is grass-covered but (at least now) higher up is bare and there are some stones on its top. Even with binoculars there is no definite shape to them. It is probably a settlement mound and there is apparently suggestion of a level platform to the south. Down at the uppermost shoreline there is at the land's edge levels like those I noted in the cliff's edge to the right of the Scapa Distillery outlet (Broch of Lingro). There is hereabouts an angle of drystane wall jutting out that may be something more than that.\par Unfortunately a very taut barbwire fence along this coastline inhibits further progress to these sights from here, so it would seem that the Campston route could be the better option. Turning back I saw a couple of seals nosing the water for a looksee.

May 12th 2004 W OF STROMNESS
Very little remains of the broch at Warebeth Churchyard, a little was documented in the cliff-face below it but I can find no trace at all myself. All I could find was a culvert slightly hidden only just beyond the eastern end of the graveyard that might more easily be to do with the later features. If you look for the church it isn't obvious whether the few tall brown stone walls and interesting bits of sculpture inside the kirk see truly belong to it or to some of the dead (who may alternatively later have had items taken for their own graves, for certainly some of the sculpture is either misplaced or disturbed). Warebeth Beach is very popular with Orcadians, a contrast with cliff-lofted beach bereft Yesnaby further up the coast (which also has its admirers). I followed the coastline all the way round. Definitely for the fit or foolhardy - even I only felt safe keeping hold of the fence in those places in which there was little more than about a foot of cliff-edge to step on. Might have been better instead risking the shoreline ,despite the occasional slippery sections . Much interesting stonework on my way. Not all could be put down to field walls (especially coming nearer Breckness where I may have glimpsed the odd orthostat) and the work on some of the ditch outlets felt more than simple usefulness would dictate. This being a difficult line of coast it would not surprise me if better trained eyes than mine could find new sites, or at least features unmapped. Only just around the corner from the beach I happened upon two gentlemen engaged in building on the shore. Perhaps a touch of experimental archaeology ?? Close by the cliff one was nearly finished building up a circular wall inside which was at least one division. Perhaps farmers or fisherman were about this structure ? It was by going up a wide ditch, presently dry, knee-deep in vegatation that I reached the end of the field with the Leafea stones. From here I could fill my camera with their image. After getting back I realised that the way chosen was the worst of several to reach Leafea and Brockan (it strikes me with hindsight that the best way is likely to be not to go down the turnoff to Warebeth but instead continue along to where the Outertown road takes a sharp turn and go around the field edges at that point). The two standing stones (1 & 1.2m high) are at right angles to the coast, earthfast. Not part of the arrangement were a couple of natural boulders of which one filled the gap.The story goes that a dog unearthed human bones at the stones' base. Now the uppermost stone is part of the barb-wire fence. It is often difficult to fathom why some stones are chosen and loads of others aren't. Just behind where I stood (HY23040928) is one of decent height, either side of where ditch meets coast are another two (HY22980917,HY22990917) and I think I remember another on the way up. All these ones differ from Leafea by being the usual taller than they are broad. My first picture of Brockan I shot here too. I took several more from nearer the Outertown road later but I think it looks better from below. Even on CANMAP this is still down as a chambered tomb. Understandable for the size. But a partial excavation found two chambers each with a short passage leading to a common paved stone-walled enclosure. So CANMORE says present thinking is a secondary broch settlement or a small Skara Brae type village. Despite, or perhaps because of, the proximity of both Warebeth and Breckness I don't quite buy it as the former.Three stones still protrude from the top. I tried several other tracks to approach it but none came much closer. Looked at from the road there appears to be a possible something in the field to its left, though admittedly only a possible cropmark. There used to be a Brockan Standing Stone at HY23140987. Finally I reached Breckness. "Almost entirely destroyed" all that is left is visible on the eroding cliff. It may be very little compared to what was once there but there is surely value in a vertical section that gradually reveals itself without any person having to excavate it ! And it goes a long ways along the cliff, over two points of the coast. Either side of the central broch there is 20~30m of settlement, and the broch itself nearly 12m diameter. Apparently there is a slice of a chapel in there too, which I wish I had known at the time. The most obvious structures at this stage in its unveiling are slab-sided floor drains. My photos will tell the story better - all very impressive after Ingshowe and Berstane.\par For one of the wide-angle shots I backed well away from the cliff and looking behind suddenly saw a fair number of seals out sunning themselves close to my position on the black rockbeds. Being quiet here they showed no signs of being frightened away. Leaving the shore it was necessary to let down a floppy wire gate and under the electric fence adjoining it. Up above there's nary a trace of the broch. Breckness House was a disappointment even for a derelict house, not truly standing out amongst the other mid-brown buildings. Near the cliff there are an amazing number of slabs flat underfoot. It is believed that these are to do with the garden but you just wonder... Going up to the road passed at least one decent standing stone (up on a field edge opposite a track between two other fields). Decided to continue to the far end of the road. At the bridge over the Burn of Streather there is a curious bit over the left wall. About the burn here is a flat sub-rectangular patch of land (HY22871036) which is incompletely bordered by walls whose only purpose is to contain it. Further down the burn is Don Burnt Mound (HY227103). The other side of the road there is marked a cairn below Feolquoy. Only the cairn (HY22711061) if still there is the slightest of swells in the grass. The track, as the road now is, ends at Quoydon . At the near corner of the field to its right there is a small triangle of land between two branches of a stream. On this is the grassed over foundation of some peedie structure (HY22471091), and I ate my lunch on it. Lastly I went to the well further up the field (HY22361097). Well it is a well, but a big circle of deep water flush with the ground and having large alien streamers of vegetation down into it - not what you'd call pretty. There is ?another to its right that is coverd by iron sheeting. Going back about Stromness rather than through it I came to the main Kirkwall-Stromness road and thought I had a chance to finally 'do' the Deepdale Stones. Except I still got it wrong. What I had actually spotted previously were Deepdale Cottage stones. To the left of Deepdale Cottage is a short sandy-coloured standing stone and in front of it a triangular block of the same colour. There are a few other stones about these of different constitution and there may be some earthwork arcing about. On the opposite side of the road at Deepdale is a solitary standing stone of a different complexion, lichen-covered like many another. Continuing around the hill you come to a large patch of rough ground and it is off the top left corner of this that the actual Deepdale Stones are located.

June 2nd 2004 ANYTHING BUT MINEHOWE II
Good job I went this way before I get around to sending photos to NMRS as I find I have the NGRs for the Brymer soilmarks. The red one remains highly visible still. When I went today I realised that there were two derelict structures and not just the one that stands out in my memores. The one furthest gone is the one nearest to the Mine Howe turnoff and the one with the standing stone, the other is the one next to the soilmark field. So often I find myself adapting maps into a notebook for greater ease of location but neglect to take similar care in recording details of the area as I find it (I would add "where necessary" but ...define). Then I come back home and find that missing an element in the scene means I'm lost in CANMAP then. At least I more often than not have the luxury of a return visit to put things right ! The structure with the standing stone stands on a slight curved bank. This probably is one of those features that O.S. infuriates me by labelling "drains". Which you know darn well are natural features most of the time, the attempt to use a region-neutral word is not much use to us on the ground in this respect. There are several occupying the field that ends opposite the Mine Howe turnoff, most in three lines like a curvy arrow toward that corner. There is a bridge that goes under the road. On this side of the road you would expect either a wide stream that went through the twin passages or one dividing into two streams to pass onward. Only here for some reason on this side the waters adopt an X before crossing. Natural but weird. I have seen places where there has been a tri via just before a bridge but this is most intriguing ! For some reason I thought that the archaeologists would be back at Mine Howe this year. I was mistaken, so I won't find out what is under the second plastic sheet. There's just the one guy keeping it and the site display hut open for people.\par Went down towards the shore reaching out to stones on the way. Over at the Breck Spine field I leant over to the roadside 'doublet' (defined by me as middling size stone with shorter stone in close parallel, like a few inches away and not packing. There is another kind that has two stones of similar size at right-angles but those could be remains of some other arrangement - see Hawell pic) and when I looked up to the spine there was an obvious discontinuity in the present wall at the bend. All up to the streambed showed as a line of upright stones (including more 'doublets' such as the gate) and then yer usual drystane wall thereafter. Very striking from my new viewpoint. Passing the Hawell road the burnt mound looked a little distressed. Going down from the Muckle Crofty stones I saw below on that same left side more standing stones in the fences that go in a line to the farm of Messigate. Most obvious, drawing my interest, was a gate-ing pair. A few minutes later (if that) I saw another such in the fences going away to my right.\par Down at the shore another "standing stone fence" up on the field edge followed me in my travels along the beach to Tankerness proper. Not as complete or as impressive as the one around the Yesnaby shoreline unfortunately. Very low tide meant no seals but much exposure of features seaward such as stone boundaries. You just know that in prehistoric times you could have walked from The Brig (a black stone outcrop) right over to the spit of land past Tankerness Mill. Indeed a month or two back I did walk almost dryshod from Mill Sand to that spit, the stream running through the mill no problemo ! \par By The Brig a "standing stone fence" lay across my way (HY51930730). There were only three stones. The first and third had perforations. But whilst the field edge stone had a barbwire going through its hole the one furthest away, with two vertical holes not aligned, was only knee-height. This fence felt ancient still, the shore stones solidly buried by the literal sands of time. When I went up to the field edge I saw that I was at the Loch of Messigate, with derelict farm bulidings that I take to be Newbigging to its left. The loch (which like most of our lochs would be deemed a lochan on the Scottish mainland) has a line of stones going across it underwater (HY51890733) so that surely the wall is rather more than the usual two centuries. Back on CANMAP I notice the field boundary is shown either side of the water but not this feature strangely. Down on the shore again, not many yards further on so still below loch level, I come across my next feature (HY51920374). Parallel to the field edge (I guess) is a sandstone slab about knee-high and slightly longer and midway along its lower edge is a square cut of about six inches. The other side of this a smaller sandstone slab lies across its left edge. In front of the notched slab what looks to be a narrow lined channel level about with the shore heads off to The Brig. A square-cut drain ?? When you look at The Brig there appears to be an intermittent line/s of stone going across. a strange place to build anything surely.Whether natural or man-made I assume this is how the outcrop gained its name. With the very low tide my Mill Sands alignment is completely out of the water. If I'd only had my waterproof shoes on I would have essayed the two black stones to take their measure. A boat was attached to them with a boatman working the far side of it .

July 10th 2004 COOL TO TROTTY
Along the main Kirkwall-Finstown road to the Dounby junction and up to the Stoneyhill sign ( instead of following in my footsteps this day you could take the road up alongside Maeshowe, but this way is less confusing signs-wise). This day was arranged around a guided tour by OAT of the Knowes of Trotty, and not thinking I could link up to the Dounby junction with a later bus meant I had two-and-a-half hours on my hands. So having transferred its location from CANMAP onto the O.S. I was fully minded to investigate the Staney Hill Long Chambered Tomb. It is very very roughly the other side from the standing stone - having previously obtained decent roadside pictures of this I opted not to take a close-up look of this lovely work. Yet further downhill I went, expecting to come to my leave point ahead of the minor junction. But even CANMAP is ever so slightly misleading, for the fence that was my guide is actually smack opposite the Grimeston signpost (additionally the Grimeston and Stoneyhill roads are confusingly intertwined if you come from the Maes Howe end). There are meant to be three tumuli in the first field (Feolquoy barrows HY3174155) but I only looked for the two which I found. Silly me ! Quite nice fairly low grassy mounds. Not expecting anything I still went over them and was pleasantly surprised by the presence of a few small stones within them, though no structure could I detect. Next on my list there was a tumulus in the field opposite the one behind them (probable barrow Feolquoy mound HY317157) which I don't think I detected. Probably this was because immediately on entry into the next field I found many stones, loose and otherwise, underfoot. I turned back round I saw they extended back to the gate, and seeing some huge specimens about (more especially some several metres down towards the loch resembling the fallen remains of a giant castle with, on the surface, loose foot-deep slabs left over from the giant's dominoes) thought for a moment I'd hit the barrow too soon. But mostly I took it to be an unmapped rock outcrop. So I passed on to the next field where the true mound was topped by one of those cattle-feeding ring thingies. Unfortunately I was unable actually to go into the field with the tomb as there is an electricity line on either side of the fence. Actually if I'd had time and courage there was a spot some way down the hill that I could have snuck through the many unelectrified lines of the fence. Either that or find some other way entirely into the field - there may be a farmtrack to the far corner .So I went back up. Luckily even from outside the field several decent areas of stonework are exposed. This tomb (HY316159) is an heck of a big 'un and so actually continues uphill, straddled by another electrified field boundary. Alas, there appears to be damp somewhere in my SLR and so the slides may not show anything when I get them. On the way back I had another look at those boulders downhill. It felt like it should be the remains of a truly megalithic fortification. But though at first glance it appeared to curve about a line the straightness of the individual pieces of rocky outcrop gave the lie to this. The 'knocked-over dominoes' lay atop this and the romantic in me says that surely at some stage nature here has been added to by man. What can be said safely is that someone thought at some stage to remove a few as the one uppermost has a smooth-bored hole about an inch diameter that has to be fairly modern. As I re-entered the roadside field I gained a retinue of skittish bullocks, nowt to be afeared of trust me. Then I went back to the top of the road and continued up towards Harray, passing Andrew Appleby's pottery along the way (he only recently gave up being chairman of the Friends of Orkney Archaeological Trust and once upon a time excavated a few cists in the area before passing his report on). My intention had been to view the Netlater broch ( 200m south of the Harray Manse at HY323174) over the other side of the road because the western arc and a chokedup well survived. But on the ground I felt less sure of its bearings amongst the many bumps, and as there appeared to be kie on most I felt it best with my time restrictions to go elsewhere. My objective the next junction on the left , the piece of road down to Ballarat House, as far as the broch at Gullow (with what should have been an easily recognisable tumulus along the way if I'd only gone that level further with CANMAP). What I came across first were a pair of flatface-aligned stones at HY318171, the left-hand side of the road short of where a disused pit is shown on O.S. and before it turns to Caperhouse. Not as slim as the ones at The Round but similarly placed. The distance between them is 3.6m, both have elaborate settings , they seem to be about the same height of 1.3-5m and are similarly shaped though not mirror images. The stone setting of the one on the right doesn't seem to extend in front but along its outer edge are several small slabs on end like the top of a drystane wall. It struck me that perhaps such pairs of stones were the termini of the very first field boundary walls, representing a gateway before we moved to the use of permanent gates and the usual orientation of stones used as gateposts. At The Round (HY503063) the track edge along which the stones lay could similarly be the line of a very low wall. Also coming naturally to mind was Leafea (HY231093). As far as I could tell from a distance at Leafea there isn't anything like a wall and it would have to have vanished before the first record. Also the stones are much closer. But I may have something - could these arrangements have been of the same age as the 'standing stone fences' and a similarly symbolic style of space management. Around the bend there is another set of these 'gateposts' that might rebut my idea. Only the feel is totally different, and try as I might I was unable to find any settings for these. Looking across the road whilst walking I was intrigued by the bulk of a mound I thought was some kind of humungous spoilheap. Turns out it was the Knowe of Burrian (HY308168). There are several brochs called Burrian, this one is a.k.a. as Garth Farm (RCAHMS NMRS no. HY31NW 2) and it is famous for a Pictish Symbol Stone now in the Orkney Museum as is, Tankerness House as was. Coming towards Furso I was on the lookout on my left-hand side for several tumuli but only saw modern agricultural mounds. One in particular (HY312166) has a sandpit on the top with several stones poking up. Couldn't find it (though 9x7m it is only 0.7m high); apparently did but my map addition proved false. Thought I detected it in a couple of stones in summer vegatation beside the road at HY311165 and didn't realise my error until my return. These were in front of Maesquoy to the right of a wooden direction sign for Furso itself. The nearer one, 0.54m high and 0.44m wide narrowing from a knee to 0.2m, is about 30 degrees offset from the road. 0.4m away is a taller stone, 1.2m by 0.3m, that nearly parallels the road. They are alone as far as I was able to ascertain. On this side of the Maesquoy buildings there is some nice evidence of features from the previous farm structures, both in and at the front of the wall. The lined stream leads to a decent-sized bridge, albeit burdened by a more recent superstructure. Early industrial I think you'd call this area. Rounding the farm complex I had my first glimpse of the very regular shape of my end objective here. A decent height to it and what was there looked fairly complete. What a disappointment upon reaching it to see no features of any kind, only vegetation, not even the modern cairn of 'broch-like stones' noted on RCAHMS. The Knowe of Gullow (HY307163) is also known as 'The Castle' and I certainly must agree with the NMRS that this lovely mound surely covers a stone structure of considerable size. Perhaps I should mount it in a wintertime expedition in case it should prove less featureless then. By this time it had started raining somewhat. I considered continuing to the end of the road just in case I could get over to the Stoneyhill road, which I now see would have been a bit silly ! No time, too damp. Reversing my steps I was sorely tempted to essay the Knowe of Burrian. Binoculars confirmed an appearance feature-full. But by now it was raining badly and I didn't want to miss that guided tour either. The Howe road, where I needed to be, is not far off the top of the Stoneyhill road on the opposite side of the Harray route. On my way I would pass the location of the only other standing stone acknowledged by the NMRS for the HY31NW 1:10,000 map. The Appiehouse Stone (HY32621620) is 2'9" high and 3' high and sits on a natural mound. It should therefore have been easy to see, but I didna. I was fairly certain I was on time. We were to set off from a car park with Jane Downes, the archaeologist in charge of the 2002 excavations, as our guide to the Knowes of Trotty. First I past the turnoff for Howe Farm itself. The first car park that I saw was on a small rise that I would say must have been roughly the location of the howe after which the farm was named even though not all that close. I say this because CANMAP shows no alternative in the region (and the same goes even in Orkney for a few other farms that aren't on mounds but are named after one - cases for investigation in the field methinks). There were a few cars there. Looking over the top of the rise I saw down at the bottom a far longer line of cars, a much bigger turnout than I had expected. There were several groups of people strung out ahead of me. Though it still lacked a few minutes of two o'clock the forerunners had been going maybe ten minutes already. As most people had turned up on time I thought it was a pity she had chosen to jump the gun and leave most of us playing catchup. No problem for my haste but unfortunate for those past middle-age. It is a bit of a yomp - because the area covered by these 11 cairns is now under management (hence the falling through of funding for further excavations this year) by agreement you can no longer reach here through the Netherhouse byre so we had to go this way round. Eventually the road takes a turn to the right, with a house inside the bend, and it was here my final adventure lay through a rough and intermittent route leading to the 'cemetery' (which isn't signposted so it is fortunate that they stand out on the left). Actually more a series of off-and-on trails you blaze through yourself. Owing to all the moss and heather it is a very bouncy walk -thankfully duckboards have been placed along the worst patches of the swampy bits now. Very good for naturalists such as I of course - I love grass in my hand but sometimes nothing beats a hardy hike. The Knowes of Trotty themselves (HY341175 and the rest ;-) aren't much to look at - I would have been content to take a group picture at the first suitable place and gone back, myself. Close up the tumuli's only distinguishing features consist of differing colours of vegetation at the points of excavation and areas of soil exposed by the burrowing of rabbits.The cairns were constructed using natural drumlins as platforms. Though many were excavated by 'barrow-diggers' only the one with the golden discs was in any sense recorded. The 2002 excavation by Jane Downes, our guide, besides numerous cists in one of the cairns revealed in a flat area between two of the cairns some kind of building - perhaps a mortuary structure. In the Bronze Age the settlements were tiny and usually within a kilometre or two (so look about you if you visit). I think that from here you can make out the Knowes of Trinnawin tumuli on the west side of Hindera Fiold. From the highest point of the cairn nearest Netherhouse two of the hills almost form a continuous flat skyline. On coming back to the main road I had another look for the Appiehouse Stone. Unless I completely missed my bearings still all I could find on the hill was a large flattish stone near the base. The rightful stone should be at the top. I went into the field to have a look at the stone I saw but it looks like just a piece of outcropping rock.{Here is the Appiehouse Stone's position according to CANMAP for anyone who wants to take a look for themselves: coming up from the Stoneyhill junction there are the Boardhouse buildings on your right with the field the stone's in next along, the O.S. map shows Appiehouse further along (on the opposite side of the road) and before this it shows two buildings (called Bellevue on CANMAP) with the Appiehouse Stone being atop the hill over the Harray road from the first of these}. Temptation struck again when I came to the track that leads to the Loch of Wasdale with its possible crannog and then the Howe Harper Cairn. I fancied the waters could be low enough to cross over to the Wasdale site for a few photies. Only if I missed the bus I was 'aiming' for the next wasn't for a couple of hours alas, and I had already been on the go for over four-and-a-half (the Knowes of Trotty tour from the Howe road end being a little over an hour-and-a half of that time ). It might have been a tight thing but, having seen one person hiking in front of me getting a lift the other way and a couple behind me getting another lift, within sight of the Harray junction I gained one all the way to Kirkwall (the two lassies were in the junction bus-shelter, so I could have done it - or got there just in time to see the bus pass on its way more like !).

July 17th 2004 A SIDE JAUNT
Thought about continuing my journey Harrayward from last Saturday, but even getting off the bus before Dounby to seek Fan Knowe might have extended my day a little too far. So I alighted at Dounby and took a left at the crossroads. Expected to see nothing between there and the Via road as tumuli mapped on this stretch are reported so low as to be often mere undulations in the ground. There is an Easthouse Burnt Mound at HY290206. This can be seen on the left of the track to Easthouse behind an unmapped little new abode in a field. It didn't look likely to repay a visit even though I know many sites only reveal themselves when you are actually on top of them, because thiis felt no Hawell but just the plain jane sort of burnt mound - I saw no features through my binoculars. A cist was found in a field attached behind Dounby Farm (about where the 1:25,000 has the first vowels of Hourston) and could even still be there.Down at Hackland I found a solitary stone in the field alongside the road, no nearby quarries or outcrops or structures to explain its presence. The stone at HY27691936 is 1.1m long by 0.5m high by 0.6m wide, one end manages not to be quite square and the other is simply irregular. Just around the next bend is Bankhead. The Burn of Vetquoy crosses the road and runs along the farm's right-hand side. In the angle this forms with the road there is evident a quantity of stones in a very slight mound. This aroused my attention as possibly some very old (pre-mediaeval) structure's scant remains HY275191. CANMAP shows nothing in the vicinity, not even a rocky outcrop to explain it. (Travelling around Orkney it is curious to note how many triangles of land are fenced off or otherwise closed in. With some it may be a really boggy bit, a bend in a stream or a road cutting across. But in most cases the reasoning is not fathomable by me.). At the next junction I turned left again, the road passing between Harray Loch and the Mill Dam of Rango. The Rango Mill looks to me to have been unsympathetically restored. Either that or a work in progress. Don't like the mill bridge, too 19th century for me. And the stream concurs because on the other side where its hidden by bushes its sound continues in a line with the much older and smaller bridge you can see on the mill side of the road. In Orkney some people have mock megalithry done poorly in their gardens. Near here on the left someone has made a country idyll in miniature, complete with a wonderful drystane cottage most petite.
Coming towards the next junction there is a bend at the hill summit. Just before you get there opposite a field of bushes is Skeldarquoy that used to have the 18" high Hestwall Barrow behind it. At the downhill end of the bushes is a gatepost pair of flat-face aligned stones. But their bases are concreted in so I thought this might not be their original position, the photos wouldn't have looked right because of this and I took no details. Fickle me. There are just so many stones in Orkney that you could fire off shots all day long even if you restricted yourself to those that seemed to have been in place forever ! You pretty soon reach saturation point during a long walk. When I came back there was a picture of a standing stone from south put up on The Portal and I thought to myself how lucky it must be to have so few stones that anything left is necessarily of import. Up here stones looking just like that one are a dime a dozen. So you hardly ever know if they are purely utilitarian, whether they have changed position or function, even the age is problematical now some are being newly 'planted' even in out-of-the-way places (even by farmers who otherwise uproot them - look e.g. in the two quarries between the Via junction and Brodgar). I found at least a dozen fine specimens between here and Brodgar, simply none stood out enough from the others for a picture.
Now I went across the junction for my first task. Not having realised its full authenticity before I needed to take measurements and further photos of the cist at Via Mound, work out its position with a proper pacing out. I see Via does B&B now. Coming up to it there is a large and vaguely triangular block of stone sitting in a depression by itself. But with the quarry literally just the other side of the road... Alas since my last visit a crop of grass several inches high has taken over the field with the archaeology. There is no law of trespass here but there is one against damaging farmers' property that includes crops. The Stones of Via were plain sailing, no danger there. However I could not see where 'my' cairn was and without being able to make more-or-less a beeline for it I couldn't guarantee not harming the ?pasture. On my way up the hill I had noticed, on looking my right, a field with a building next to a standing stone (unfortunately an illusory combination) and a close-knit standing stone pair in a feld wall. So in spite of changeable weather I went for a looksee. They stand at HY25771588. They abut but the one on the right is rather loose. This has been the result of a recent knock, especially as its right end is in line with what is either a blocking pair or a stone setting 0.4m high. Both standing stones are 0.4m wide but the one on the left is 1.3m high and the other 1.1m. Why the query about the stone setting. Because the stones at right angles to the pair are before them. The LH of the ?blocking pair is shorter but thicker, 0.3m by 0.1m against 0.6m by 0.05m). A boulder fills most of the space to there left and could have arrived there only recently. So perhap this area originated as something different. Almost finished measuring when it bucketed it down. So I waited until it eventually went. Whilst I waited I looked up and saw on the summit what seemed like a square arrangement of standing stones amidst many modern stone pillars in fencing. Possibly another trick of the point of view. Then I chanced to look to the right and saw several more standing stones along the line of the hill. Suddenly it struck me that this was a mirror of the sites I call Breck spine and track near the Mine Howe complex. Hmm.. When I got back home I looked again for something on the building in the field between the pair and the 'standing-stone fence'. Instead I found out that this Fiddlerhouse field is probably the site of a barrow as no less than six cists have come from here. All are reported removed (4 about HY25821581, one at 25821575 and the other at 25831582. Plus a pile of ashes from 25901570. Makes me think a little of the Breck urns). Is there a connection with my that day's find you wonder. Coming past Via and looking to the house you see that singular block sits in a bite out of a hill against which you see the house, making me see it as a settlement mound. Only on my return did I find this as Via Barrow HY25841609 from which a cist came (now missing of course)
Went back to the junction for my second task, to go inside the field of the Stackrue-Lyking Broch, take photos of that multi-period settlement's other side and perhaps look for the passage entrance the downhill side of the road.Coming down from the Via junction at one point when I looked to my left I saw a broad standing stone. This was on the horizon half-way along a barbed-wire fieldfence. Too far for a picture. Not much further along there was a pair of standing stone gateposts, and at the top of that field was another broad standing stone in the same situation as the last (no, not in line with the gate at all). So you have to ask yourself is this the preservation of ancient stones in position or a farmer making a statement with recently placed ones ? I had already seen what looked like at least one standing stone in the rubble over the quarry on the right and now saw another in the quarry before that on the left. It had been used as a gatepost in modern times with more than one site of metalwork. Thing is I'm not sure that this one wasn't still erect here on my previous visit. By now I was getting a thorough whetting again, saw cycling through the rain a fellow unfortunate. As I took the turnoff for my second task (the junction indicating Voy) it started to ease off a little. This target was even worse than the last, the sides and top covered by herbaceous plants so that only the larger blocks of stone wall remained visible. So no go. I did consider going on to visit the sites at Redland, only I knew this would be no better. [At the Knowes of Trotty last week the point was made about how its being so difficult to reach meant it was not reknowned despite its importance (and un-signposted I would add). I think many sites are in this position purely because in the summer when visitors might seek them out all but the present major sites (i.e. for the greater part HS guarded) are completely obscured by thick vegetation during the summer months when most visitors are about]. So a little reluctantly back to the junction to go down to the Brodgar peninsula and an earlier bus.
Coming to the Buckan hill you would have difficulty recognising from the road that the Ring of Bookan is anything of import, an unobtrusive mound whose most obvious feature at this distance are at present the few tall plants around its top. Looking at the Ring of Brodgar below you see the visitors swarming it like erect ants on a honey trail. As I past the point where a track goes up to Bookan Chambered Tomb I took note of a standing stone gatepost pair on the left HY28921406. A mirrored knife-shaped pair probably relatively modern, though who knows. The standard 0.4m wide and 0.9-1m high, the RH one of the pair now leaning sideways. Despite the continuing rain I was troubled by flying insects as I past the Ring of Brodgar, a first for me. Not the black midges one would expect but smallish flies of some pastel shade. Brushing the hordes off most of the way to the main road. Opposite the Stones of Stenness the waters were low enough to show the large boulders that the seals are apt to sun themselves on. None there now, but I was fortunate enough with my binoculars to see them slightly further off but still by the shore. Being very inconspicuous on the boulders there I wondered if anyone else had bothered to make them out ?


July 19th 2004 KING OF THE CASTLE
Along the Deerness road way out to the turnoff for Holm and points south. Went this way because somehow I remembered it as
mostly downhill compared to the reverse route of starting out on the South Isles road and coming back this way. From here I
found myself going uphill anyway. At the top of this hill was a bend sign, and from the summit I hung a left off to the
lesser road marked Greenwall, Muckle Ocklester being at the farmtrack on this same junction. As I passed the lesser Ocklester
there was a magnificent view of three seperate islands - to wit Copinsay and Corn Holm and Black Holm - that is likely to be
why the farm is where it is I felt. When I came to the Greenwall junction there was a nice looking standing stone on the left HY51400137 with its head above
the thistles. Looked for a partner alongside it at the top of the field but found none until I ventured a few more paces down
the hill. I found it hidden among the nettles, so if they had ever been a pair of gateposts they would have been a very odd
couple and the sizes were the wrong way around besides their configuration cutting across the corner of the field. At the
junction turned left. Looked at the plain though artistic wall of a building (HY51450129 not on the map as a complete
structure) around the corner. The end is a beauty with lots of bits and bobs and spaces filled with a variety of stones. The
front is a disintegrating disappointment. At some point I imagine it was lived in. Probably the first building here, windows
filled in at the time of the Ancient Lights Act and then falling into disuse when the posher stuff came in after that time. Next turning came at the sign for Lower Bu. A nice bit of synchronicity there. And further along the road are Upper Bu and
East Bu. Didn't find out till after I came back that CANMAP shows a couple of stones at the top corners of the field past the
turnoff HY51880114 and 52020118. And in one of the fields behind Braehead another one is marked at HY51840688. No info on any
of them, no NMRS or nowt. If I had known I would have had a peek, though I suspect they might no longer actually be other
than on a map. Anyway, back to the junction. From here you can see, right to left, St.Nicholas Church surrounded by its graveyard, Castle
Howe (from here you see only the wall placed about the top in 1923), what looks like a tiny lighthouse, and a 'modern cairn'
with a stone pillar (though someone did put it down to the tradition of beacon hills). As I took the turnoff the rains
started. So I waited awhiles betwixt headlands until it turned a piece drier. Finally I crossed the coastal fields to Castle
Howe. The vegetation was tall and rank, making this is the worst time of the year to investigate such a ruinous or
fragmentary site. I never learn. Couldn't really tell what was underfoot, seemed to be channels and/or ruts of some type as I
neared the hill. Coming up my feet encountered a multitude of lumps and bumps and I appeared to be climbing over different
levels on the hill, putting me strangely in mind of Wideford Hill Cairn. What a struggle to reach the top it had been. Be
very careful going about the summit still. Once there I found it took a while to tell the chamber wall from the outer
protection of the excavator's wall. Rather disappointing. The inner area looked like a rockfall and I wasn't aware of seeing
any steps at the time. Mindst you the modern wall isn't weathering well either. Just about worth it still. Lifted my energy
levels for sure. Had a look at St.Nicholas Church. If I had read the latest on the NMRS I could have done more there (see misc. for
details). Somehow I only took in the bit about an earlier church on the hill, for the arc of protruding stones on the mound's
summit outside of the church wall sounds intriguing. Even so it was fairly obvious to me that the place had a
pre-ecclesiastical significance with the later church site (if perhaps not the original) being placed beside the mound rather
than on it and continuing outwith the existing walls. In Orkney several religious buildings were built on or by brochs for
example. Not far away lies an archaelogically recent bridge with a no dumping sign. The water on the seaward side was fair
honking, perhaps related to the black stuff encountered on the shore of Howes Wick as I had walked between the howe and kirk
headlands. Beneath it on the other side, and at right angles to it, is a smaller and more primitive bridge HY508009. This
bridge is on one end of the newer bridge and at the other is a very tall drystane wall. Taken together these two items lead
me to believe the mound behind them could well be settlement related. Now the heavens opened and verily it chucked it down.
Fortunately I was given a lift from the Hurtiso junction for I still had a ways to go even to reach St.Mary's.
July 28th 2004 TOP OF THE WORLD
Took the bus to the 'Newton road end'. Looking across the Loch of Swannay I could see at least three of the holms. Stoney
Holm is a crannog and possibly Park Holm also. The big islet Muckle Holm is not a crannog but I could see a distinct mound at
one end that surely speaks of human modification. Despite the weather forecast there was nary a cloud and all three holms
were hazed by heat as a consequence. Chrismo mound, unmarked on the map at HY315289, lies either side of the road a little
beyond the A of A966 on the 1:25,000 past Crismo but is very low. A little further along look across the other side of the
road Costa Hill Barrow HY313291 can be made out on a prominent false crest and was re-used as a beacon. I wasn't entirely
sure that I did see it. Further along there is a white rocky outcrop by the shore and before this is perhaps a standing stone
and a suspicious looking large white boulder on its own. The next shoreline feature extends into the waters, a much cracked
geological pavement like the one at Loch of Tankerness only far easier to geometrise. I fancied I could see rectangular
structuring in the nearer part, nature is so teasing sometimes. Before the farm buildings at the road bend, about where the
55m contour line approaches the road, there is an unmarked bowl barrow at HY307275 which I still haven't found to my
satisfaction.
As I came to the top of the hill above Swannay House I noted once again the curious construction of the drystane wall along
the inside bend around and downhill. Sticking way out of the wall by about two-thirds there height are a number of thin
reddish slabs on end. You get the feeling they have been part of some stalled structure. All of them have a neat hole or two
about a small iron rod's diameter (perhaps all would prove to have two if I removed them from the wall). Generally speaking
they are of a size and shape comparable to that holding up the giant slab I have previously note down at the burn, which is
also holed. Past the farm and going up the other hill on the same side is the more usual slab fencing, the slabs white,
larger and nearer to square. At the junction I detoured by going straight onto the B-road and then taking the first turning left, signposted Lochview.
Taking the upper of the two tracks here I could see the mound I was looking for just uphill to my left. at the top I saw a
kind of standing stone at the edge of the field, thick and rectangular. Actually there are two earthen mounds here HY296282,
Mittens a.k.a. Rantan. I only saw the one nearby, there were no features visible and the field was surrounded on the sides I
saw by an electric fence. Went back down to the road where my attention was taken by a utility-knife-shaped standing stone
HY29402893 placed diagonally at the very corner of the field opposite. Back onto the main Birsay road. Coming up to Fea I could see a standing stone HY28872883 beside the track going up to it.
Went for a closer inspection and I felt there had to be a companion. The opposite side of the track didn't look promising at
first, only saw a re-used/displaced slab. Then I saw it hidden amongst seasonal vegetation. A gatepost pair too far apart for
a gate (unless the precursor of the 'Orkney gate', which is nowadays a few slight wooden posts with barbwire strung across
them and looped on whatever is handy either end). Wondered if the pair aligned anywhere so looked back the way. On the map it
looks towards a confluence down in the valley but my attention was drawn to where the kie were up the hill, making several
gurt dark muddy areas about the join of several fields, the centre of which was a slight depression in the form of a low
rounded triangle. Through the binoculars I could see that at the right was an area of soil with many small stones apparently
embedded in it. Even on a very large scale CANMAP all that is shown here is the start HY293298 of a drain (mapspeak for
straight-ened stream usually) going off to the left. Make of it what you will.
My next target was to get closer in to the Knowes of Lingro. The present 1:25,000 shows them just past Garlaine but there
is now a bungalow nearer still. Before I reached the gate my eyes were taken roadside by a standing stone and setting
HY28452894. A mini s.s. at only 0.9x0.17x0.1m, though probably extending underground which would make it even slimmer. Modern
?? Made me wonder if some bigger stone had been removed at some stage - this day I saw several modern concrete pillars in
similar associations, passing curious. Like Via this setting is in front of the stone. The visible base of the standing stone
is level with its top. Both standing stone and the abutting stone (0.45m long) are at right angles to the road, and then a
stone 0.5m long is parallel to it. 0.47m from the abutting stone what I read to be one end of the setting is mostly buried -
what shows a mere 5cm above the grass is 0.2m long. Underfoot you can feel the stones of a wall beyond the setting. I always prefer to climb over gates, but this one is chained anyway. The downhill mound has a scrape in the top, though
this could be rodent damage (rabbits are rodents too). At the top of the hill are the other two mounds. That on the left is
another disappointment. Though there are more patches of bare earth this could still be the results of animal, rather than
human, excavators. Probably the latter making digging easier the the former. Looking to the last mound from this one I was
heartened to see a few stones protruding from the far side. Still it came as a very pleasant shock to find that these were
part of a cist (Usually new observations from a watching brief are passed on by Historic Scotland to RCAHMS, but 8 years ago
this one slipped the net, hence its none appearance on the NMRS till my observation). The two uphill slabs are virtually
complete, giving a size of 1.2x0.8m. The longer slab points fairly straight uphill, so a N-S orientation I think. These two
slabs are only slightly out of joint, the cause in the long ago perhaps a 0.6x0.1m stone showing not far above the lower end.
I saw no sign of the other end slab but 0.35m of the other long slab can still be seen standing up 0.2m. Soil and grass comes
maybe halfway up the inside of the cist. Coming off the mound HY284290 you could see the roundness of it and there is a
ditch. At first I thought this too curved around the mound, but then it went over to the corner of a drystane wall - perhaps
it is a robber trench ? However further down the road there is a ridge going across the hill. Could it and the ditch both be
part of the site, a demarcation about the site ? I do feel there is more going on here than just those three mounds, a barrow
cemetery would be luverly. Once more on the road the next site, still this side of the road, is easy to find as it is located by the wartime
buildings. Unfortunately these have slightly damaged the Knowe of Crustan HY275289. Originally it had a 4'-5' standing stone
surmounting it. An early excavation found only burnt bones in a common cell. This site would have been easy to get too if the
sign at the road saying "Beware of the Bull" could be dismissed. Looking up the hill I couldn't see one, but that carred
little with me then. If someone does go there they could look for a smaller mound on the same ridge, about 110m to the NE.
As the road descends you come to a disused quarry (always a place to look for discarded standing stones if accessible by
car). Opposite this I found another of 'my' flat-face aligned stone pairs HY27292850. Below the brow of a hill seems a
typical situation for these. The more of them that I see the more certain I am that they mark the boundary of larger areas in
Orkney. This one overlooks Birsay beautifully. Though both are 1.3x0.6m they aren't really a mirror image - the one on the
right is rectangular apart from a bump at the top, the one on on the left a severely 'pecked' utility knife shape. They stand
3.3m apart with the gap bridged by an 'Orkney gate' as described earlier. I'd love to plot all this type of gateway on a map
sometime, carve up Orkney prehistory stylee.
A little further down the same side is a standing stone with setting HY27122841. Further along, opposite the first of the
complex of Craig Millar buildings, is another HY26712826 without one. Roundabouts are several rectangular/square ones
prostrate. My first thought of a 'standing-stone fence' I discounted when I saw that a now turfed-over and low drystane wall
edged the rough pasture a metre or so back. In a pattern that I have seen before the next standing stones were on the other side of the road. The first of these
stands 5 or 10 metres past the Vinbrake junction, I forget which. Actually I only saw it when I was working out the location
of the second. This latter is down at HY26252800, is at right-angles to the road, has a neat circular hole near the bottom
and a series of on-end slabs abutting it like the top of a drystane wall. Of course all or none of these could be 'real' standing stones. But such a number, excluding any stumps and the like I may
have missed, in only a kilometre conveys an impression of the size of the problem here in Orkney for the archaeologist
sorting data from 'noise'. After three-and-a-half hours fieldwork I finally arrived in Birsay village. Not enough time to be sure of reaching my
final target before the last bus, so left it out. Actually my original plan had been the bus to Birsay and then a different
walk, but in Orkney the drivers sometimes leave changing the route number till late, and my intended had said it was the town
service ! Lesson being in Orkney always ask what the bus 'is'. I forgot and was fortunate my error turned out to my benefit.
A roasting hot day with barely any cloud had not been the forecast either. As is often the case Radio Orkney had been half a
day out - we met the 'correct' weather as we neared Kirkwall (Finstown, as so often, the great weather divide).
August 5th 2004 SOUTH RON. TOP
As distinct from the tail (where lies The Tomb of The Eagles, the Ladykirk Stone and the Castle of Burwick - I've never been
to the first, didn't know about the decorated stone and went nowhere near, was actually at the last but put it down to
mediaeval and so missed out on it !).A bilobal exercise ; two circular walks either side of St.Margaret's Hope, Hoxa and Eastside, then hopefully down to the top
of Burray for what are meant to be two magnificent brochs (from an archaeologist's point of view that is).
I think this is the first time that I have been the full Hoxa route this way around,starting on the road that goes above
the bus' waiting-room. Pretty scenery as usual, even seen through the shifting mists. Heard dogs barking at Ronaldsvoe
Kennels across the way. Lots of lovely drystane walls. What a nice change from all those 'standing stones' I though, simply
ordinary walls. Fate tempted it promptly bit me. Down in/on the sands there was a broad standing stone (ND436925) big enough
to be seen from (what I later worked out was) a couple of hundred yards away. The Oyce of Quindry is what I guess you would
call a tidal inlet but obviously wasn't always so. A stream still runs through it and the stone was this side of it. To the
right I seemed to see a far shorter stone but I wasn't really sure with the mists and all (yesterday I mistook a tractor tyre
on end for a standing stone, so you can understand why I'm cagey).
My target on this walk was on Hoxa Hill and could be reached by two slightly different routes. If no-one objects I would
say now to take the track that goes up the RH side of Roeberry House and past the quarry. The one I took was what appeared a
more direct route further down, a fraction past Roeberry farm. Climbing over the rope-tied metal gate the farmtrack goes
halfway up the hill where it becomes obscured by pasture. At the beginning of the second field was a stream outlet fallen
into disarray, the dark brown stones marking it out as mediaeval or later. The stream and its walling ran across the hill to
come to a halt near the corner here, well seperated from the fieldwall itself. The ?culvert (what I still think of as bridges
myself) points downhill (perhaps aligned with The Wart), so my description is possibly incorrect. There are two large slabs
across the top and the nearer has a large-ish semicircle out of the edge. A slab on the left has a small circular hole.
Taking a second look at the arrangement I wonder if the slabs aren't fallen orthostats. Maybe the ?culvert is a water tank or
something. So unlucky to see it in this state. In explanation I now see a well marked on the map further up the field on the
wall side. This field where you can only sense the ruts of the farmtrack I can also feel stones, the remains of a wall or the
hardpack of the track I suppose. At the top of the field I had to slip gingerly over the barbwire-fence at the extreme corner
where there is a slight rise to effectively reduce the height that vital few inches. Here's where it got tricky because of an
expanse of gorse directly ahead. Tried a few ways to pass amongst the shrubbery but only succeeded in getting everything
below the knees completely soaked. Quite a few stones in the area, making me consider whether this actually was my target.
No. Eventually had to give in and go round to the right. Here I came upon the disused quarry, continuing to get damp the
while. Above the lip I saw an earth section with some small stones that might just possibly represent a former structure here
if not simply my wild imaginings. At the top end of the quarry is the farmtrack I should have taken. Visible and dry ! My thoughts were that The Wart would be gone or under cover or not up to much. Certainly hard to find. But there stood the
chambered cairn exactly where the map showed it (ND433935), smack behind the triangulation pillar. A stone cairn with a
circular wall incorporating slabs (I noticed a void under one at the left) and a slab coming towards the centre from the
right (the interior was excavated down to floor level). There is a platform about it which seems deeper from behind owing to
the building of a water tank (whose wooden superstructure looks like a very fancy bird hide). There are stones on the
platform (I didn't spot a rough modern wall about the central depression so I hope it isn't the one I saw ;-), stones behind
it and stones in the gorse. There must be something going on besides a quarry and a cairn. Rather than go back to Roeberry I continued down to the Dam of Hoxa, which presents the appearance of a beach. I took a
picture of the two tiny islets in one of the pools behind it. My way appeared blocked by a drystane wall before I noticed a
breach in the top. Carefully I clambered over in order not to be mistaken for the culprit - which turned out not to be human
but a now half-decayed sheep. About half-way down this bottom field I found a fallen standing stone near the fieldwall. Only
about two or three feet long, it was not dissimilar to some of the stones in the wall, only I could see no gap anywhere for
it to have been from. I didn't visit the Howe of Hoxa at ND425940 this time but continued to my right to the Lowertown road
and into the Hope again.
Back at the main South Isles road hang a right and the Eastside road runs down past the war memorial. No kind of sites are
shown between here and the crossroads though at least two places at the left piqued my interest, probably 'recent' stuff. The
first is a rectangular piece of rough ground marked out by farmtracks or very minor roads to somethings. Then coming nearer
to the crossroads lies a big shallow depression with stones where no quarry or rocky outcrop is on the map, with a high bank,
presumably natural, marking its downhill end. Went across the road where a sign denotes Wheems Hostel. There was a standing stone on the hillside below Weemys, though I
didn't expect much. Down past Sorquoy Farm the field boundaries either side line up and it was positioned along this
ND46919140. Not too much trouble finding it, the Sorquoy Stones a whopper that would have stood out whatever the crop. Even
more impressive close up what with the lines near the top and the green plants over the white lichen. Three to four metres
high I guessed, actual height 14' to 14'6". Very little of a stone setting even for a far smaller stone, deeply rooted
perhaps. Did momentarily consider reaching my next target from there. Instead went back to the road and down a little further to a
useful-looking farm track. Looking to the Kirk Ness Mound ND473913 the field margins are rough and dense with vegetation. And
the mist being still about my next avenue looked to be around the coast. Once past the brow of the hill it is very visible
all the way to Kirkhope and up along the coast. It is associated with a loch drained a long time back, perhaps on an islet. Decided to have a look at St. Peter's Church. From what I read when I came back this area may have been sacred a very long
time. A Pictish Symbol Stone found on a windowsill of the church is now in the National Museum of course, a cist found at
Kirkhope in 1965 the farmer covered up again, The Sorquoy Stone is also known as Papley ' priest's field'. On the coastline I saw a tall rectangular standing stone behind the church with a lichen-covered boulder alongside. Then
at its top I saw a cross-shaped hole, equal-armed with circular ends, that made me think Christianised. Depite which I went
for a closer look. Disappointed to find it too well decorated. Various periods but distinctly arty. A footprint looked to my
eyes as old as the cross. Other things were deeply incised, crisper and very 'new', including a Pictish symbol practically
the width of the stone.
This is a storm beach of large stones of all shapes. Even above the shore there are many, increasing in frequency as you
progress to Kirk Ness. You think of standing stones being quarried and shaped but here they are, like an open-cast mine for
megaliths of all shapes and sizes. Perhaps this is why the Sorquoy Stone is so big, not importance, purely material to hand.
Such an abundance marks this area as mucho importante surely. Near the beginning a relative few stones are upright, including
some about a depression in a rise ND472908. Despite the orthostats Kirkhouse Cairn is, as I surmised when I saw it, not for
the dead. It could be ancient, except that if so it has been re-used more recently, perhaps as a kelp kiln. It has been
heavily quarried. The next rise along is another Kirk Ness mound ND47389117 "locally believed to be ancient". A single stone sticks out of
the top visibly. Just beyond it I found a deep straight channel coming to the coast, where it is 'sealed' by drystane walling
ND47439119. To me it screamed vallum. Though I think of it as V-shaped because I had to through the tape measure out to get
the full depth the sides were too steep for me to risk going down alone. As it is now it is 4m across by 2.5m high and there
are stones along the top. If the Kirk Ness Dyke is one boundary of whatever the mound is then a brown standing stone I'd
passed already was likely marking the other. Having another site incorrectly placed by me I looked for it by climbing over a
drystane wall field boundary using more than adequate set of stiling stones. Where the dyke turns a bed of yellow flag, not
in bloom, would seem to mark the vanished loch's edge. So did the dyke (described in NMRS as drystone dyke boundary and cru)
seperate the mound from the loch, keep the mound within, both or neither ?
As I went back to church and up the hill full sun finally broke out. At the crossroads I went right to reach Churchill
Barrier No. 4. Long before then I accepted a lift to the main road. Reaching the far end of the barrier I thought about
looking for stone cairn The Hillock of Fea ND493956. This is a site badly eroding into the sea. Which meant it would most
likely be problematical to recognize, record and get the bus on time. Similar problems with the brochs at the other end of
Burray. From the road I felt certain I could recognize one of them though the map confused me. Clearer targets than the other
if I took my time. Unfortunately 45 minutes could soon get eaten away if they were as reported. So eventually I moved on for
this bus was the last of the day. As I came to the next barrier my Samaritan again gave me a lift. This time all the way into
town despite his appointment being outside of Kirkwall on the way. A full working day done.
August 10-11th 2004 WHITECLEAT TO MINEHOWE
The first day I didn't expect to go beyond Inganess Bay. Which meant I didn't have my camera (for the Mine Howe structure) or, more importantly, tape measure and 1:25,000 map. So the next day I did the reverse journey, which had the benefit of firming up an alignment. It is this journey I shall recount. Second day I took the bus to the airport, shaving an hour-and-a-half off my total journey (now all fares are being halved and a return fare is finally less than that of two singles, making even longer trips than this one affordable for me). The previous day I had arrived at Mine Howe as the diggers were coming back from lunch and finally saw the ovoid structure found at the end of last year's dig, the neat blocks of an arc of wall at the 'back' and a few upright slabs dividing the 'front'. A new area of the dig alongside being opened up is a long wedge, several metres long and several feet deep at its far end, in which there were only a few stones as yet. This day they were still having their lunch in front of the site huts. As I headed towards the diggings an officious woman strode out of the custodian's office and demanded to know what I was doing. Orcadian I thought, but definitely not a native or a blender. So I explained that I wasn't going onto the excavation, merely taking photos. Did I have permission she asked. Do I need it I said. This stumped her. Re-phrased my query twice and still no answer. So I turned to the diggers and asked them (bellowed rather, I must admit !). Either they couldn't understand me or they were simply flummoxed. From my two seasons on a dig I do know that there isn't usually a problem with taking photos except that sometimes technically copyright belongs with the excavators. Finished sites under ownership may have such a policy but it will be prominently displayed. Took my pictures but felt they would have been better the previous day, somehow an incorrect perspective to represent the structure's features fully.
On the road by Hawell I found my previous tee of stones HY51350657 complicated by more stones. Seven metres closer to the farm a very low wall ends and about a foot in there is a slab HY51340658 0.5x0.2m leaning at a 45-degree angle. On the opposite side of the road to this a stone HY51340658 1.3x0.5m ends a two metre section of drystane wall extending beyond a 'lawn' boundary wall. Don't know how sure you can be of 8-figure NGRs derived from maps. You certainly can't from a 1:25,000. Even with the likes of CANMAP by the time you have 'drilled down' deeply enough lines have usually changed to broad pixellated dashes. For an instance the other day I was kind of surveying stones around the headland opposite the Brough of Birsay. For a fair distance I could obtain an NGR from mapping my amateurish coast outlines onto the screen. Then I came to a piece where the ins and outs I had placed my stones with didn't appear on CANMAP, which only showed a general curve where I had several. And even the coast outline of dashes were somewhat bigger than my ins and outs ! Either GPS equipment has to come severely down in price, and I do mean severely, or it has to be the kind of thing you can rent by the day cheaply from toolhire places. Fat chance ! From Hawell the next lot of standing stones starts about HY511068 just as you come up to the small loop of roads where the quarry and old schoolhouse/church are, but on the other side of the road. These roadside stones vary from 0.5-0.9m high by 0.2-0.3m wide. They appear irregularly spaced. However peeering over reveals more flat on the field below, the field floor being 0.6m below the standing stones' visible bases. So it would seem that these stones were all smack against the field bank. They may have been arranged 'male' 'female' as they are of two distinct shapes. Opposite the far end of the loop, at the road turn HY51020690, the whole of a drystane wall shows and has leaning against the inside a mix of standing stones and large slabs. Is this how the previous section would look if the roadside bank were removed ? Down at HY51080707 there is a two stone arrangement at the roadside field edge. One across the field corner barbwire 1.3x0.6m with a small bored hole near the top, and a second 4.6m away 0.9x0.6m at 90 degrees to it.
Next were several additions to my Mill Sands alignment of three saltwater-blackened stones. The associated straight barbwire fence begins at HY5120760. Over the road from Stenswick cottage there is a stone HY51310764. Down at the bottom of the hill is a triangular piece of ground bordered by road and fence and coastal track. Here there is a last standing stone (from my point of finding) at HY51080707 1.2x0.5m behind a drystane wall. In this small piece of land many stone items have been dumped. They are of several periods. A few are pieces from grand houses, ornate tops to walls or gateposts I seem to remember. Most have the appearance of standing stones. The one that stands out is 1.7x0.5x0.1m and has a total of four (equally spaced ?) small bored holes along its length. As the road straightens out and three metres from a field corner, on the left for a change, is a thickish standing stone HY51330782 1.5x0.55x0.16. Shortly after this is my best find of the previous day, a flatface-aligned pair from which you look up towards a church.The one on the left HY51300801 is a thick rectangular 1.2x0.5x0.5m block leaning a little to the outside. 3.2m away the other stone is 1.6x0.5x0.2m and utility-blade shaped. At the place where next the road turns (to the left) a 1.1x0.2m stone stands diagonally at the field corner like the one near Rantan/Mittens.
The Whitecleat Well is now covered by an upturned pallet with a big bucket on top of that, whether to prevent further damage or to protect people from it I know not.. Nothing else has changed.
August 12th 2004 BUTTQUOY TO DOUNBY WITH DETOUR Exceedingly last minute decision to risk the weather. Took the first bus to Birsay and took off around the headland
opposite the Brough of Birsay. Easy enough to find the Knowe of Buttquoy HY24482820 as it is an obvious mound in the
stone-walled field that has a stone 'hut' straddling one of the walls. Found no way in for a closer look and no visible
features. There are many standing stones on the headland's cliff edges, and these seem to be in association with the field
boundary as they practically begin and end in tandem with it over the other side of road and track. Most had visible, or at
least uncoverable, stone settings. I was reminded of Yesnaby a little, though those bestride the landscape magnificently
rather than only hugging the actual lines of the coast. Coming to the further coastal reach of the stone wall and the last stone I could see a solitary specimen further along.
Along the way I passed a rockstack coming to Skipi Geo, like a squat Old Man of Hoy only far more accessible. The standing
stone HY24902829 1.3x0.6m wasn't at the cliff edge, instead it is at at a field corner ending a barbwire fence that goes to
the road into Birsay village. Retracing my steps it was time to measure up and take note. ?Age. In the final analysis no-one knows for a certainty. b: The first stone HY24532843 0.4mx0.3m aligns with the eastern fieldwall and has a low stone and a setting eroding in the
cliff face. c: HY24502842 1.2x0.6m, setting at front 0.3m deep and 0.2m high. d: HY24452840 1.2x0.6m aligns with the Point of Buttquoy mound 1/'A' HY24462835 and has a setting extending right and front
of it 0.2m. You would expect it to line up with the more prominent Knowe of Buttquoy in the same field but it does not. Point
of Buttquoy is decent enough, though the many stones one sees on it are mostly from a far later sheepfold. e: HY2443240 1.0x0.4m with a complete stone-setting 1.2x0.6x0.1m. In the field opposite this is Point of Buttquoy mound
2/'C' HY24432826 but I don't have the two lining up. f: HY24422819 1.2x0.6m. g: HY24412817 1.1 (I think,ink damp) x0.5m. h: HY24462010 1.2x0.5m with a stone-setting 0.2x0.8x0.3m is photogenic, but alas the back is now the cliff face itself. I
think it aligns with the eastern wall of the stone-walled field. i: HY? 1.2x0.5m. j: HY24582814 1.5x0.5x0.3 with complete stone-setting 0.9x0.5m. Nearly opposite this there is a length of wall inserted
where some time past a gate was. Or at least a long gap in the wall filled in. Where the stone-walled field turns the
drystane wall itself only continues for a few more metres. k: HY24602814 1.0x0.6m the last stone 28m from the spot of cliff opposite the field corner. And no more stones do I meet from here until I am heading out of Birsay village. On the LH side of the A966, at the end of
the last barbwire fence fence before the crossroads, is a 0.9x0.6m stone HY25302789. Taking the road as it heads for the gallery I reach the Vinbrake junction, and today my journey takes me this way to go
down the turning for two good sites. Soon I can see Stanerandy Standing Stones, more properly a tumulus in which standing
stones were later inserted. From here this is at the back of a field of standing corn. Looking for a way in I am
disappointed. Because though there are gates to climb the crop is to the very edges and you just couldn't help damaging it
whatever you did. No go. Further along I find some stones on the left past the Hillquoy turnoff. Two metres back from the
road at a right angle is the first of a pair HY26822770. It has small circular holes bored at top and bottom, is 1.4x0.7m and
rectangular like its twin, which faces the road 3.9m away and is 1.2x0.5m. At the field corner beyond a ragged/pointy-topped
standing stone 1.2mx0.5m also faces the road HY26912766. At the corner where the road turns instead I continued along a farm track. Radio Orkney having the weather wrong again a
man was working outside on his house here. Going left my next site lay in the second field on the uphill side. Though I could
see Newan Chambered Tomb just inside of the barbwire fence above me the wire was high and taut. At this end of the fence
HY27212773 and in line with it is a stone 1.2x0.6m that would have aligned with the cairn when that lay whole. Another stone
1.2x0.5m is across the way and has a small hole near the top HY27222772. At first glance I thought they were
flatface-aligned. They aren't in the slightest. Down in the valley, at that field's end and slightly away from the corner,
there's another standing stone HY27232759. Similarly unaligned. Continuing along the farmtrack where the track next swerved
around I came across another standing stone HY27222773. This 1.2x0.6m stone along the field edge at an angle that aligns with
Newan Chambered Tomb too. So much for objects this size being from an historical period, as even I had begun thinking. Still
no way in. Had to circle up the hill and all the way around till I was in sight of the disused quarries. Here several barbwires were
down across my path. I was in luck because this is the 'Orkney gate' for the field of my target. So in I finally go. By the
time I reached the cairn I'd been almost around the whole of the field boundary ! That it stands back from the field edge is
the result of ploughing on the outside. There are few stones visible at first but things become better once you are looking
down instead of from the side, despite its not being what you'd call high. Coming from the fence the near top has two stones,
a very sub-rectangular 0.8x0.6m slab and, to its top left at an angle, a probable top of one 0.5x0.1m. The top back is taken
up by an apparently circular collection of stones 1.6x1.8m across. One that is a little larger than the rest, at 0.8x0.3m, is
at the LH side of the 'arrangement'. On the left again are three stones abutting that would widen the collection to 1.8m but
do look like sides of a cist really. Back down onto the road to see if there could be a slightly better viewpoint for Stanerandy Tumulus. In front of the
cornfield are various outbuildings. I snuck behind the Nissen hut, a little hesitant initially but the gentlemen out on the
other side of the road would have said if it weren't allowed so I was on. The field corner has a nice sturdy post to provide
a camera rest. Still would prefer to be in with my subject. Later in the year, eh. Then on the road once more, only this time
clear round the bend. Downhill between there and Newan Farm (clean the other direction from the tomb, silly) another
flatface-aligned stone pair offers itself HY26982755. They are 4.2m apart, the LH a roundy top and 1.0x0.6m and the other
0.7x0.8 and rectangular. Usual position for this type of pair etc. Between here and the fence above Newan Farm you look
straight across to Stanerandy Tumulus. A very different view though from further away than the uphill view. Good if you have
binoculars as I did.
This road along the topside of the Loch of Boardhouse takes you to Kirbuster Farm Museum just after it meets the next
junction if that's your fancy. Coming relatively near the junction the Knowe of Nesthouse HY279257 showed itself to me as a
prominent piece of land sticking into the loch with a great bushy mound. Too hairy for me to visit this time of year, wait
till the vegetation perhaps dies back. Though this 2m high site is down as a chambered mound, with a couple of well preserved
chambers in the north half, it is a much mutilated Iron Age settlement. Somewhere hereabouts I saw a boulder on the hillside with some rocks I thought were something. Would however seem to be an
old field boundary. Or perhaps a slip fault. Above the line I saw a scar of dark exposed soil. Next field along was a similar
line, only a few metres further up. And another dark scar. In both lines there were rocks. Didn't look like any kind of wall
though. Two offset tracks with short vertical faces of light soil at the uphill edge ?? Don't see any features on CANMAP
where memory located these. I looked for the Loch of Boardhouse Standing Stone HY28052520 where the Burn of Kirbuster meets the loch the other side of
the museum. Memory at fault. Saw a dark stone at the loch edge slightly further on which must be it. Probably marshy area,
summer lush, not safe at the moment surely. The NMRS says this 3'2"x2' stone is probably not very old. Hmph.
Soon I was in sight of Twatt, that practically unmistakeable building on the skyline. Decided not to go there and instead
take a turnoff that met the Dounby road below. Made a boo-boo identifying a junction (drat and double-drat mapfolds) that
meant instead of the direct route to Dounby I went 'round the houses' on a very minor road to the B9057. Wondered why the
wind generators grew closer ! Mixed up the Hundland and Banks lochs to confuse mself for longer. The beginning of this road goes below the Loch of Hundland. Approaching the bottom pocket of the loch there are any number
of water-blackened stones of which I appeared to make out at least one alignment. Definitely a feeling that this part used to
be farmed (or at the very least marked out) in prehistory. This whole are is part of a nature reserve now (the board only
mentions birds but I saw a lovely stretch of Grass of Parnassus at the road edge, wonderful green-veined pale white flowers
in full bloom, and a disabled lady was gathering long-stemmed water-loving plants too), and in pools at the marshy roadside
edge there are several big light-coloured boulders that could just be from some kind of structure. Up over on the east side
of the loch there is actually an Iron Age settlement HY298264 similar to the Knowe of Nesthouse on the Loch of Boardhouse,
with a few low upright slabs protruding. My next standing stone HY29542530 1.2x0.5m I found just in front of the RH side of a bridge going across the road. If I
had known where I really was then looking over in the same general direction I would have been looking in a boggy area for
the Burn of Durkadale Mound, 11x9x0.4m with long slabs protruding HY29562527. Perhaps I did see it, only to doubt the
antiquity. At this time I became definitely lost. The map couldn't help me as I still thought I was only slightly out. Perplexed I
felt I could only carry on and tough it out. Passing Hundasaeter I looked to the right down into Durka Dale, where I saw a
large (as it seemed to me) solitary monolith in an area occupied by ruinous dwellings, which became a symbol for my
pisgy-led state. It certainly looked all by itself, only perhaps it was only sticking out of a burnt mound. So much stuff I
saw or could have looked for, simply too bamboozled to get my bearings I let it all go. At least I saved time on all that
measuring of stones because I could not place them. So I continued dazed and confused along Skelday Hill until I found a
marked junction, the Evie-Dounby road. Where I erred again and took the shorter stretch to Dounby.
Nearing Dounby if I'd known I had enough time I would have gone down the marked North Bigging road for the mostly
unexcavated broch, aka Mithouse HY308200. Time enough in Dounby for a little lookabout. The two burnt mounds shown behind the
collection of houses on the Evie-Dounby road are gone now. Considered taking a gander at the burnt mound I'd seen afar on my
last visit that started here. Nah, new target. Of the burnt mounds labelled in the north quadrant of Dounby one did still
remain. Pass the Swartland junction going north and there is a gap between the housing on your right. Look across and there
is a burn at the back of a house where you can make out the much mutilated Knowe of Makerhouse HY29352114 24m by 1.7m high.
No go here but as I come to the end of the gap there's a flat area with a couple of barred metal gates that should let me get
up and around to it. Too done in to do it this day. More promises. There's a few nice little shops in Dounby that offer something different to Kirkwall or Stromness. Oh to have even a
little spare cash. Like the Birsay shop I'd been in earlier Dounby Stores were selling Birsay tomatoes at £1.99 a punnet, six
to a punnet ! Ah, but these are heritage ones of differing shapes and colours. Though tomatoes aren't favourites of mine if I
felt my tastebuds were up to the challenge yours truly would have fallen to temptation.
Finally the bus came. Had misread the timetable. It didn't go all the way but stopped at Tingwall where the last bus did
go on to Kirkwall. As we approached Birsay it was with mixed feelings that I saw the Oxtro Broch for one hadn't disappeared
beneath summer growth as I had missed my chance at photographing the other side now that the kie were gone. Once at Tingwall
I had another hour to wait. Perhaps I should have kept myself warm seeing if I could get onto that broch or ahint it. Now the
weather had finally arrived, and me with no jacket of course. Looking across the waters Egilsay is to your left (Westray to
the far left possibly, don't know if ever visible from here. Rousay in front. Gairsay to the right. That nipple at the top of
Gairsay is a burial cairn HY441223 that Trevor Garnham thinks could align with the lowere passage of Taversoe Tuick on
Rousay.
August 14th 2004 SUNNYBRAE ROAD
Starting on the road that runs between Hatstown Brae and the old Finstown Road. On a whim, and because I hadn't gone that
way in a long time,instead of continuing around the bend to the left carried straight on to the track going over the hill
then kept hanging right. In this area there are (at least) several blocky standing stones. As usual I dismiss their antiquity
as I see them as merely more bulky versions of the concrete pillars also used as gateposts, made monumental with standing
stone material. Even I have to draw the line somewhere you see ! I was sure there was a place where I had continued across the fields directly to the old Finstown Road but somehow missed
it. Instead I terminated at a place called Blackhill. Where the field starts here is a weel made drystane wall with barbwire
fence. And to its left I had been led to a flatface-aligned stone pair HY42341130. More usually these are on a hillside
rather than atop it, but you could consider this a lower slope of Wideford Hill. As is often the case one of the stones is
squarer and the other more pointy, and one has an obvious stone setting - perhaps all of these start with one original stone
which is then tranmogrified into being part of a gateway later ? Seen from the road below the drystane wall runs across the
horizon, except thet from here the top bit of Wideford Hill presents the appearance of a long mound above it. Comong towards the old Finstown Road there is a wide farmtrack on the right that disappears towards Wideford Hill. When I
eventually walked it (there are gates to go over) I found that it led to the flattened spot on the hill where now you wend
your way down to the cairn. Walking along it you can't help but feel that this was a processional way. There is folklore
about lassies collecting the dew from Wideford first thing one day a year and one day a year the Wideford Hill Run takes
place, though this is up the very steep road that passes through the farm up to the wartime installations. Hmmm...
August 15th 2004 ALL TO SKAILL
Open day at the Castle of Snusgar excavation HY23611960 (RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY21NW21 lists little, hence the dig),
close by where the Skaill Viking Hoard was found HY23691962. Sunday not good for those lacking transport. Fortunately until
the end of September The Tourist Trail bus goes to Skara Brae HY229187 within easy walking distance for almost anyone. Choice
of two and took the later one, which still gave me three hours for a walkabout beforehand and only one bus to Stromness
after. Did think about going there first anyway but best to follow protocol.
Going towards Skaill Church (where a gravestone marks either where an old set of burials was discovered or where they were
re-buried - the NMRS record is unclear about this) a tiny stretch of very minor road leaves the B9056 to continue following
the coast before a track leads you into the fields to the Knowe of Verron. The track fades away soon but it's easy going.
Don't mind the cows. Where I crossed a stream is like stepping stones but could be fallen standing stones ?from a wall.
Further along I came across a tumbled line of stones going to the coast. A little too spread for a plain wall it seemed to
me, and if it had been a curve (it could have been a very slight one I suppose) I would have taken it for part of the
boundary of ? a ness-taking or a promontory fort. Of course the Knowe of Verron HY231198 is a broch, though I harboured slight doubts when I was there. It is in a similarly
precarious position to the Broch of Borwick at Yesnaby but without the wall height to keep you out. As I came to the broch
remains all I saw was a short grass mound, and in the modern-times excavated cliff edge I could see a gallery wall sticking
out. The 'back' of the site is well protected by a sharp deep sea inlet to the cliffs, calling to mind the Brough of Bigging
in Yesnaby. There are traces of early diggings when you are on the broch (even on the grassy top I was careful). This I found
out about back home but this doesn't tell you about the square pit there, so could it have been revealed not long ago ?
Smallish relatively deep slab-lined square pit and stones surrounding the top. Exquisite. Nearer the cliff edge there are
other areas of stone I could make nothing of, could find not even the slightest viewpoint to make them worth a photo. Looking
over the cliff at the recorded excavation is a vicarious thrill. I could see the slabs of a rectangular structure and I
thought there was something alongside. I could also see the edges of black material coming through the cut, placed there
after the exploratory excavation of the eroding section. The weather still being fine and dry I gingerly crept down onto the
cliff exposure using some of the bigger stones as lightly as possible in order to disturb nothing. I had hoped from down here
that the nondescript stone scatters above might show something but still no. You can still see some of the midden material on
the 'floor'. Looking from left to right there's the slab-sided structure, the seeming outline only of another structure, some
of the gallery wall sticking out (as is often the case with these cliff-eroding sites) and then further up the cliff face a
couple of spaced small protruding boulders (including a well-rounded ovoid) that gave the appearance of being the ends of a
'cupboard' or niche. Behind the broch is a field boundary and at the corner of of the RH field the gate is held by two round wooden posts
HY23081980. Rather unusual for Orkney. Closer observation revealed the outsize stone-settings that would formerly have held
standing stones instead. The one at the left has a RH stone 0.5x0.1m whose lower end abuts the existing post's right, a stone
at the upper end 0.45x0.1m going left, and a stone between this and the post. Peering over I saw that the drystone wall of
the RH field sits on a base of flattish boulders seemingly. Abutting the RH post's right is a stone 0.4x0.2x0.2m, and behind
that two probably displaced stones of which one 0.25x0.1m has an angled LH end. Looking behind the gate I could see an
intriguing basically flat setting almost fully vertical in the earth. It totals 0.9m and is at an angle to the line of the
gate, with the left 1.9m away but the right only 1.6m. Odd. Taking the front as a rectangle the LH side is a stone
0.4x0.25x0.15high, the top end a stone 0.5x0.15, the RH side a stone with a pointed top. Below the top stone is the end of a
distinctively reddish stone block 0.2x0.1m and below that a stone presenting a triangular appearance (around the RH edge of
the 'mound'/'ramp' is a similar shaped stone 0.2m across that may be part of the setting. There appear to be lines on the top
stone, but these could be simply geological and I was able to make nothing of them. Where this field makes an angle there is
15m from the corner (2.4m between modern fenceposts is handy for field archaeology I find) a standing stone at right-angles
HY23101981. From here I pursued a slightly lower route and found the true stream crossing HY23271977, including large fallen stones
(the largest one split along its length) that brought to mind the Mark Stone of Gaitnip bridge. There is somewhat of drystane
walling lining the beck here but it seems older than that above that crosses it. Could repay investigation by someone more
methodical than I. Back on the road I went up past the church and took a left at the very next junction, a farm road that takes three sides
of a square that brings it back to the proper road again. On the first side is the farm track down to Lenahowe. Here is the
Linnahowe Mound, a.k.a. 'The Castle', a long prominent mound occupying most of an enclosure. In the far end a chunk has been
taken out for a silage pit. As the NMRS says there are many stones revealed by the pit but nothing resembling any kind of
structuring. I only saw a few stones in the undug bit, nothing really worth mentioning. The second leg includes the track to Upper Garson. There is a standing stone 3.7m up the right of the track 1.4x0.5m. I
wouldn't have seen this if I wasn't measuring for something else I must say. Past the track junction I found a standing stone
HY2326920535 actually incorporated at the bottom of the drystane wall, 0.3m high at the near end and 0.7m the other by o.9m
long. Six metres away HY2329320542 was another in the same situation 0.6x0.6m. An order larger than the usual boulder
inclusions. When I went back to the first stone the tape measure found something solid. Probably the wall base, perhaps like
the one I had just found by the knowe, but the soil about it was practically rock hard too. On the B9056 again going uphill there is a short length of slab fence that uses short adjoining standing stones instead of
slabs. Then again, there is a quarry close by.
It was starting to rain hard now. So at the crossroads after taking the Quoyloo and Orkney Brewery road I immediately
took the next turn downhill instead. This way the 1:25,000 shows Rossel Howe, only the NMRS says this cairn is now gone. By
now it was pelting it down. Below Howagar where the field takes a corner I thought I had found another flatface-aligned pair
but the second leg of the fence there was another standing stone, to make it three. Soaking wet I gave up on the idea of following the road down to Kierfiold and the Loch of Skaill. Besides, going round and
uphill again I had no idea how long it might take - could catch the bus but miss the open day doncha know. A pity because I'd
looked forward to attempting to find my Loch of Skaill 'niche' (for measuration). So I took to the little-used track on the
right that runs below Netherstove and Midstove as the shortest route to Snusgar. Grass very damp against my legs but it
turned out to be worth it.
a,b,c: First standing stones on the downhill side of the track at HY24441979. One field ends and the line of the next one
is staggered. Two stones along the field fence projection both broad but the one nearer the road well thick. A third stone in
the staggered field is on the boundary but slightly away from the junction with no sign of a wall association even though it
does point straight across the field. Couldn't safely approach to measure them because the ditch too obscured. From here on there's standing stones everywhere both sides of the track, with none of them less than 10cm thick. d,e: HY2400019766 1.3x0.6x0.1m along a fence boundary away from the actual junction and pointy HY23978119764 1.5x0.6x0.1m
, both on the uphill side. f: Where the Burn of Snusgar crosses the track at the uphill top of the 'box' there's a biggie at HY2394819762
2.2x0.6x0.5m pointing uphill, utility-knife shaped. Like the one by the backup power station in Orphir it stands on the
stream bottom backed against the fieldbank, apparently with the one face fully exposed. This probably does bring the top
about the level of the other stones' tops but still begs the question "Why here, like this ?". g: Just past the 'box' on the downhill side a stone HY23941975 1.3x0.6x0.2m stands back from the fence, fortunately within
my arm's reach. h: At the box looking down the burn there appears to be another crossing, with a stone visible at ?HY23941962. i: no NGRs till near the end now. Along from f a stone of possibly mirroring shape, a fair specimen at 1.7x0.6x0.15. j: 20m on but the downhill side 1.3x0.6x0.1m. k: 4m on 1.5x0.2x0.1m l: in the field near the fence the solitary presence of what looks like a mediaeval gatepost standing stone, with usual
rounded tip. Different colour of stone than the others but still its unusual siting makes me think it is part of some
incomplete arrangement along with k and l. Coming up to a track junction heavily populated with standing stones. m,n,o,: Uphill side 0.9x0.4m, then one 1.2x0.4x0.2m at right angles to fence, and another I didn't measure because from
the junction too many more continue uphill, I'm all stoned out. p: One more on the downhill side HY23761975. q,r: From the junction downhill are only two more. One at the left and only slightly further down one at the right
HY2373219615 by where I cross the top of a field to the Castle of Snusgar.
When first thing I looked toward the unexcavated side of the site and saw the white of stones. Thought it could make
something to snap, only now it turned out to be merely wool !! Demi-circled the site following a decent ditch (unfortunately
pockmarked by neat rabbitholes a fair way). Then up that side of the mound and the ladder over the drystane wall to the dig
side. Joined a group just started. The ditch I looked at they believe unlikely to pre-date the mediaeval. There are low
swellings behind that could be ditch or banks but just as easily outbuildings to my mind. All they are digging now is down
onto sand, so that unless it gives out even deeper down the site is likely to remain Viking. I wondered to myself if whoever
was responsible for the later structure at the Knowe of Verron had moved their metalworking to here when that was no longer
tenable as a safe site to do the metalworking in. Here they are finding shells and animal bones, but to date the largest
piece they know the function of is the area of smithying at the top of the mound. On the day I went the vertical section
showed where a hollow cut into the consolidated sand for this. A little further downslope they tentatively thought they had
uncovered the stones of a passage. Not quite sufficient for me to use the SLR. Oh how I miss the digital camera, sadly still
u/s.
After this I went towards Skara Brae. The 1:25,000 shows tumuli where cists were found behind Mill Croft on the left, but
someone (most likely a ferrylooper) has declared their road Privet. On to the bay side of Skaill House to try and locate the
Knowe of Geoso. Even using the map I had a terrible time finding my bearings, as if the two regions of paper and land held
only the flimsiest of connections to one another. Walk to the edge of the far house wall corner and look across uphill. It is
easy to see the triangular scar of quarrying in the top right corner of a field. The cairn is just by the top right corner of
the field diagonally opposite (though outside of it a fraction). Might have made it out on the horizon from here, wasn't
sure. Spent so long thrashing out my bearings making my way through fields of cattle to it felt beyond me. Saw drivers going
to Skaill House Farm, which looked a simpler option, but making the grand detour to get onto that road in the time remaining
was problematical. So I gave up, basically.
Rested and ate a late lunch whilst waiting for the bus to Stromness and then the one home. Going south to Stromness on my
right I thought I saw a double of flatface-aligned pairs along the track to a disused quarry opposite the farmroad to
Clumley. If the observation was accurate they are at about HY244159 and facing off to each other either side of the broad
track.
August 20th 2004 HERSTON CIRCUIT
Took the mid-day bus to St. Margaret's Hope then carried on towards Burwick, briefly still considering whether I could get
all the way down there. Erred on the side of caution and took the other end of the Herston road, the one marked Sandwick and
Herston. My plan was to look for a standing stone three cairns and Weems Castle broch there, then come back to the main road
and a little further on take a right a longer way to the Stews Standing Stone - which I didn't).
On the Sandwick road attempted to locate the Kirkie Hill Cairn ND43849223, a 0.7m high turf-covered 7.5m diameter mound
that had proved cist-less, only there was too much activity up there (felt like a quarry but isn't) to make it out from the
road. Saw a big mound beside the road's downhill side. As I came nearer I could see it was simply a farmer's spoil heap, a
proper cairn with an obviously excavated top lying shyly not many yards ahead of it being of far lower height. Looking
towards the cairn my eyes swept back and saw the standing stone to its right and slightly further downhill. These are the
Clouduhall cairn and standing stone. The former being right next to the road and close by the field entrance (open - as I've
seen it in other such places I often wonder if this is done for the tourist season). Virtually at the fence was a 0.7x0.5x0.3m boulder that appeared definitely shaped, not sub-rectangular but with several
straight edges - anthropologists have nature v. nurture and we have geology v. anthropology. The circular depression at the
top I worked out to be 5.5x4.4m internally and you can walk around it. Inside it I could feel stones underfoot and it felt
like there were stones beneath the feet over all the rest of the mound too. The rest of the visible ones were about the
depression though, at the west another boulder 0.4x0.4x0.3 and to the east another three of which one was 0.3x0.4x0.3. In
front of the three was a rectangular area of excavation 1.6x0.9m. In the 0.6m deep vertical section I only saw a few small
stones embedded in the soil, nothing to look at. Went around downside of the mound and then uphill till I felt I was at the
base. Here the mound loomed over me to at least head height. Once back home I read it is a metre high presently, so either I
got it wrong or perhaps it is built on something else. I'd love to think all will look clearer come winter, except that the
obscuring vegetation is all grass. From there I went across the field downhill to the stone, 8'2" high and 4'6" at its widest part. It appears to sit in a
hollow and have an annular ditch in close proximity as shown by the ring of darker green grass. I am minded on of the Comet
Stone and 'my' Grieves Cottage site (though the circle is far tighter here). Nearing it I see a large boulder to my right.
Hidden amongst the grass I think I make out another such boulder, probably a fraction smaller, just downhill of the stone. At
the Clouduhall standing stone itself I cannot see a stone setting. It has a small bulbous bit a little above the summer
vegetation, too low for a shoulder and not sticky-out enough for a hip.
Next I went to find the two cairns on the downslopes of Nev Hill. Nev Hill Cairn ND42928931 (NMRS record no. ND48NW 5) is
a round cairn 9.5x1.2m, now surmounted by a modern cairn but with the central cist (excavated 1926) still in place under this
marker. More impressive would be The Nev chambered cairn ND428892 (NMRS record no. ND48NW 10) as it is described as denuded
and a cist was found in it early on in the 20th century (no finds came from the chamber's exposure in the centre of the cairn
in 1970, so maybe gone now). 44' in diameter and 4'high, it is probably a tripartite Orkney-Cromarty tomb and has sides of
drystone walling. The chamber is oriented north-south and lacks a back-slab, though there was probably a semicircular wall to
the rear. Anyways my chump orienteering skills found neither and the tracks are many and convoluted. If you read the NMRS
don't let the description of Somerset fool you or you will stay much too close to the jetty as I did. It is a fair collection
of farm buildings on the hill, not the peedie croft above the shore as I initially thought. Rather than go in front of this,
drilling down through CANMAP shows I should have gone up between it and Bayview and then followed a track across the back of
the Somerset buildings and go with a right-hand leg and straight on. Whereupon the round cairn should be seen at a field edge
and the chambered cairn downhill from that about the centre of the field bottom.
When above the jetty I longed to go around the small stretch of coast in front of me to the broch ND434889 on Castle
Taing. Knowing how deceptive it can be estimating distance from these kind of views I regretfully declined the invitation.
And the Stews stone would have to wait its turn another time too, it wasn't close to a road or even a track. So I continued along the Herston circuit. Soon the Oyce of Herston inlet appeared below. A burnt mound around one end was
too good to pass up. It lies in a field corner along from the mission church with a low concrete wall cutting into its
roadside edge. People have said all burnt mounds look alike. Mostly they look like grassy hillocks, at least the Oyce of
Herston one ND42059072 looks burnt ! The centre has been quarried away. Nothing tempted me to continue to Herston (though I
should mention that despite Harra Brough over on The Altar being said to be mediaeval the NMRS mentions some loon up there
once shoved a five foot stone down into the sea from the wall and a pile of bones with it), so I retreated to the circuit.
At the circuit corner I looked back over towards Nev Hill and Clouduhall and saw a big ole lump of land jutting up in a gap
between the Kirkie Hill and ?Ball Hill. Thought at first it was archaeological, but whatever it is makes an outstanding view
if you're out this way. Sorry, no photo, my flabber gasted I neglected this time.
Coming on the straight stretch I noticed the placename Big Howe. Trust me to be going on the road that I hadn't
researched. Nothing marked on the 1:25,000 map. Still I had a song in my heart. Expected nothing or a big howe. What I got
were what looked like lines of well-quarried mounds and/or banks. Possibly short on time, and seeing heaps of confusion, I
walked on whilst making a note to look them up. Back home what I find on RCAHMs explains much. Actually there are two places
here, there being a Little Howe besides. Big Howe itself ND42999087 is a natural rise. In 1926 a cist with crouched burial was found at ND43009082, and in 1945
burnt bones were found in a cinerary urn. At Little Howe the former presence of cists has been deduced by non-local slabs having beentaken from there for use in a
cow byre. More importantly this is the site of actual artificial mounds, a complex Iron Age settlement ND43129081 (RCAHMS
NMRS record no.ND49SW 18) also known as Widewall or Newbigging Farm.
At Kirkhouse I simply had to follow the shore this side of the Oyce of Quindry to seek out the stone seen in the mists of
a previous visit to the Hope. All I had seen so far through binoculars didn't stand out as my memory. On the shore from the
road you could see a long straight ridge of rock with a few stones on top that made it appear non-geological, only end on did
I see it curve a litle around the back. In a key position along the length the long bulk of a pale seal presided alone. Where the sands were revealed they were not dry but let the feet sink in an inch or so. Some of the shore resembled a
gravel beach with its covering of discoid mini pebbles. Along a section of inward curved coast around there ND436918 it felt
as if I was looking at the nibbled edge of one or more land surfaces in the cliff section. Lots of angular stones. Some of it
put me in mind of the cliff section immediately right of the Scapa Distillery outlet. Except this had to be geological in
nature as nothing so extensive could have been unobserved otherwise. Coming to the Oyce of Quindry itself all of substance I could make out along the inlet was a big lump I had already seen
through the binoculars. This resolved itself to a mass of seaweed over a boulder. Not quite as impressive or distinct as it
had seemed on the day of the mist. As I neared it I could further see that it was a stone rather than a natural boulder. It
was only as I came up to the end (albeit on the opposite shore) and passed by that I saw at least a long straight edge and
made it out as not a broad stone but a standing stone leaning over at an acute angle. It lay in an even bigger patch of sand
than the one I watched it from, but though I fancied taking measurements I did not trust my luck so far to extend to visiting
these sands over the way lest they prove quicker. So I made my way past the howling dogs of the Ronaldsvoe kennels and back to St. Margaret's Hope. Only a few weeks ago it
would have been certain daylight to the eight o'clock bus. Today this was the end of my peregrination.
August 26th 2004 HOWIES THAT Craw Howe to Mine Howe is a swathe of mounds, and I am reminded of a similar statement in the local paper about Skaill in
Birsay when describing the excavation that ended at Snusgar last week. In which case I would like to nominate Sandy Howes as
perhaps a site like the Castle of Snusgar; it is well back from the coast and most of the mounds in this region (including
Mine Howe itself) are by contrast glacial moraines, simply consisting of rocks of earth.
As I have mentioned before, there are several intriguing depressions alongside the road to Deerness. I shall be using the
distance "fp" between fence posts (2.4m) to approximate how wide the features are as seen from the road. a ; HY49220707 The first of these is 4fp wide and lies several metres back from the road (unlike all the others, which are
along just the other side of the field fences) in the field just along from the cottage behind which lies Craw Howe (HY491069
at least two mounds). b ; HY49360700 Next field and 4.5fp wide. Behind Fairview, the next cottage on this side, we have The Five Hillocks tumuli
(HY493067) in the big field. c ; HY496067 Next field along again and the only one of these depressions on the map (the 1:25,000 but strangely not CANMAP).
5fp wide entered by a narrow track 2.5fp long which crosses the bank around the central depression.d ; HY49990631 On the other side 6fp wide and the only one apparently bereft of stones. Most likely the southern end of Sandy
Howes. These, which are only represented by a name on the map at HY498067, occupy the two fields coming up to the Brymire
farmtrack.The next field from the Brymire track is where I found cropmarks HY501061 and HY500060. Because they appeared rectangular I
am reluctant to date these before the Viking period at the earliest though.The field opposite the Swartabreck farmtrack is where the Brymer Mounds NGR is HY503060, though more than one field shows
them. Here on top of a mound (HY503060) there is a standing stone alongside a derelict structure - I used to think this had
been to do with a boundary, despite almost being 'on top of' the building, but am now more inclined to say the stone was
there first by a long way and was later only just 'respected'.Over by Swartbreck are yet more mounds or moraines going off into Stem Howe and its settlement. The plantation to one side
hides Round Howe and then we're into Long Howe and Mine Howe, two glacial moraines adapted by man.
Coming to Mine Howe I finally took the tour. Turned out the wedge excavated in an area between the ditch and the site huts (precision work by the farmer with a JCB)
was a sounding that had shown up an o.g.s. slope that had at some stage been levelled off with midden - one day a dowser's
rods had gone mental over the area where the bones and pot are now known to lie. Against the usual expectation the cattle
were as big as a modern Charolais. He wondered how Iron Age Orcadians kept their beasts penned before wooden fences. Seeing
that there are long straight ditches dividing fields all over these islands could it be that this is how the task was
accomplished ? Not perfect however (unless they came up against the likes of Kirk Ness Dyke and the Burn of Langskaill). Trench E is where the complete female burial turned up. This had been buried behind the ?rear wall of the main structure
here, partway down under flagging. A rectangular object with six dimples is believed to be a template used in sheet-metal
working. IIRC here was found what are normally referred to as 'Victorian doorknobs' and dismissed as intrusive. Only someone
took a closer look at this one and discovered it to be the butt for a spear, perhaps used at the site for beating metal. New
name for object is "Victorian doorknob spear butt"! The structure itself has almost definitely never stood higher than it
does now, and was mostly used for working with copper and copper alloys. In the structure was a hearth and a small square pit
that turned out to be a complete furnace, a rare find just as the burial is. A large piece of whalebone is thought to have
been to absorb the impact of hammering on the more fragile pieces. All the rough grass about the mound is there to let you see where the ditches were. The exposed ditch terminal that is to
the left of trench E is all you see of Mine Howe most of the year. There's a nice bit of revetment near the bottom of which a
large rectangular block of a distinctly different cast to the colour of the other stones sits near the 'centre line'. The
narrow strip of grass to trench E is the line of the passage to Mine Howe itself, the ditch having served to control
admittance to it. Above this is the entrance to 'Mine Howe' itself. Still no-one knows quite what it is about. It has been said that because
it is on a hill it cannot have been a well. And yet the well at Whitecleat (HY51110852) is also in a hillside, albeit
constructed in a far simpler fashion. Being a limin some have suggested it was used for telling the future, either similarly
to the way the Delphic oracle was used or through incubation as at the sleep temples of Asclepius. Or it might have been a
place of human sacrifice, the victim being drowned as shown on the Gundestrup cauldron (a practice dedicated to Esus in
Gaul). Because the only comparable structures are in Ireland it has been said important prisoners were held and/or disposed
of here. Many theories, all unproven. To the right of the entrance the bepinned object that I saw last time is proving very interesting. They are taking it down
very carefully, a bit at a time, as despite the diminutive size this is a rare example of an Iron Age iron-smelting furnace. On its right and down the slope is trench G. Part of this cuts the ditch, and lying against that was found a crude stone
floor that perplexingly appears never to have had any walls itself. In one corner two structures like a figure-of-eight were
excavated. The one nearest the corner consisted of a circle of slightly splayed erect slabs like an opening daisy that made
me think of the stones downslope of the Long Howe cist. And in it was found a bairn's skeleton that took up little space. In
order to be able to make sense of this the structure was removed. Unfortunately nothing more turned up there.
The guiding archaeologist told us a specialist had looked at the flint chippings from the Long Howe cist and discovered
them to be Mesolithic ones re-used. This could mean that there had been a Mesolithic settlement in the vicinity.
Alternatively I remembered that there is a flint-working site hard by Unstan chambered cairn. No pit had been found but a
kind of slot had appeared. Alas by the time we got there after the tour this trench had been closed and all had been covered
with earth. So no pictures today. Not that it mattered in the end, for when I went to photograph the depressions I found my
roll of film done !
August 31st 2004 TO WEST HOLM
It's often difficult to know, when you find something suddenly catches your attention on a well-trodden route, whether it
merely escaped your active notice before or whether something has uncovered it. Doesn't matter how many times you've been
that way, nowhere is that simple. So I am heading out for St.Mary's. Just out of Kirkwall there is a series of buildings at
the end of which is the relatively new Orkney Wine Company. At the beginning of them I saw a triangular standing stone by the
garden wall corner. Maybe I have seen it before and ignored it. But I notice in front of the wall looked recently cleared so
more likely this is what now made it clearer to the eyes. Past the building complex and going up the rise was another similar
stone. Thought I'd take notes when I came back only before then I accepted a lift. These are the last stones on the road
going to St. Mary's, though this may have been the result of later stone clearances along the way. Just before you see the sign for the Rashieburn track the Five Hillocks HY460054 lie in the second field behind a group of
houses. Only green mounds right now. Anyway I had other fish to fry.
Nearly a couple of hours to reach the broch HY470014 on the outskirts of the village, whose other name is the Broch of
Ayre. Probably because my legs were acting up. Still not my destination today. Through St. Mary's and on to the B9052 instead of crossing Churchill Barrier No.1 for the Lamb Holm settlement HY480045. A
section of the beach here consists of well rounded stones that make the most wonderful susurrus as the tide breaks amidst
them and then sucks back. Even on a low ebb like today it satisfies something in you. On the other side of the road is
Graemeshall, a house originally Meil 'sand' in the 16th century. On a mound a small cannon sits on what looks like a bit of
concrete - I fancy it originally lay within the tiny circular stonewalled enclosure alongside. Looking at the Loch of Graemeshall with all those incursive reedbeds I can't help but wonder if it holds any
archaeological secrets from a drier time in Orkney as the Loch of Tankerness does HY522093. And nothing recorded for the
hillocks about the burn on the right-hand side of the road all the way up to the junction. One of these looks suspiciously
circular - "The Islands of Orkney" suggests there could be several brochs awaiting discovery in Holm (nearby is the
suggestive East Breckan). A dun cow sat across the top.
At the junction I turnd right at the war memorial. First standing stone in ages about HY49280226 at the roadside by the
fieldfence along from Crearhowe. Crearhowe burnt mound HY493024 occupies the top left corner of the field, but the stone
doesn't line up with it. To me the mound looked annular or had a ditch and bank, probably this appearance a result of the N
and S being dug into though. A well is marked by the wall to its right. 20thC concrete structures have been built into or
below the mound. Being as how the native Americans coming for the OISF are Cree it is nice that I wondered if that is the
first element in the name, creigh meaning boundary. Just my fancy, we were never Gaelteachd. Bottom of the Fea track HY48970241 were no less than three standing stones, the two on the left forming a track corner.
The right one was 1.2x0.3.0.2m. Of the left two the nearer to the right was 1.3x0.3x0.1m and 3.5m back from the road. The
last was 3m further along on a line taken from the second to the road, and unlike the other two stood parallel to the road1.3x0.35x0.1m. Next I came to the track HY48910246 going to Little Millhouse. Here the layout of four stones appeared to make things
clear as the two back from the road marked where the farmtrack narrowed. So I took no measurements because I thought the
construction historic. But all these faced were at right angles to the road, in which case maybe I should. Just on from that juncture is Biddy's Well HY4889502466, for so it says in white paint on a small square slab on top.Good
job the sun was fully out as the well is under the wall. Internal dimensions from the tape 0.5m wide by 0.6m front to back
and 0.6m to the top of the sediment. Between it and the road a layer of brown stones. Lifting a grassy veil I could see
square-cut back and sides. The front was less distinct, made instead from rounded stones (not brown IIRC) and perhaps
slightly curved. Exceedingly rough corbelling ?? Or mayhap the front used to be where the brown stones are now and all these
stones merely backfill. The Millhouse track produced merely a single stone on the left - it looks as though the right wall has infringed on the
track though. Here there is a bridge with a most impressive drop for Orkney, perhaps as high over the burn as the Brig o'Waithe is over
the lochs. Something to do with the mill I guess. There are Little Millhouse and Millhouse and Millfield but no sign of yer
actual mill, not even a NMRS note. Strange. On the right-hand side of the road a picturesque reedbed with a lawn fingering it
from a 'new' house. The house is reached along the Millfield farmtrack. This curves back from the road before straightening
out. At least the distance of this curve there are standing stones along the barbwire fieldfence of the track's upper side
HY48650263-48680256. These are not all that consistent in size or shape and are all several metres away from each other. I
distinctly feel they are 'modern' decoration or this could simply be my prejudice on my part. The rest of the road there are only two more standing stones, the last only yards away from the next track on the right.
This farmtrack ends abruptly at the Hall of Gorn. Not much to look at now but it must surely have been more important a long
time ago. One of the barrows in the field behind it is also called Gorn (only saw them from the road). The Hall of Gorn
HY48370261, of blackened earth and clay gave up a 5' long cist 1901~3. Two other mounds lie 30 yards to the E HY48400259 &
HY48390257. In one of these semicircular barrows a grave was found in the 1920s. Another barrow, mutilated in the north and
east, is Laughton's Knowe HY48260258 in which a bronze dagger now in the national museum came from a 2m long Late Bronze Age
cist in 1916.
Coming to a crossroads I turned left to see if there was any trace of the Roma souterrain HY47830314. In the late 1950s
during digging for a water main it was found on the NW side of the road about halfway between the crossroads and the first
bend. Fancied I could detect it in a larger piece of dark green grass. Fancy not find most likely. Then back up to the
crossroads I carried on.
The next feature I came across could be nothing, a mound of a stone and earth matrix HY473036 over from a disused tip that
has probably been used for that purpose at least a little itself. A burn runs along the back of it. Which is nice. Amongst
vegetation inside the fence was ?dumped at least one rectangular slab of standing stone material. The way in is by an
unusually large 'Orkney gate'. Didn't think much of the idea of handling that only to find nettles in the way, as seemed very
likely from what I could see. A couple of fields further along HY470038 (before the Little Hunclett road only still on the left) is a series of long
bumps like Nevada Cott (in which case I'd like to compare the pit mound with Cot of Cursiter... in my dreamstate). More
glacial moraines or more than. Where this meets the road a face of stones is exposed. Some resembles a rock outcrop,
especially a big boulder jutting out of the top. Vague intimations of straight lines that could be remains of structural
walling or drystane wall cutting across or simply geological cleavage planes.
Soon after I hit the main road, beaten by the sun and legs suffering again (that slip inside Dun Deardail seems to keep
coming back to plague me still), I accepted a lift. Normally he doesn't offer and normally I don't accept. Oh happy day !
P.S. The 'new' house by the bridge appears to occupy the site of the Mill of Holm, odal until Earl William nabbed it. The
mill was dammed upstream.
September 5th 2004 ING TROUBLE
An old article by Evan McGillvray in "The Orcadian" on "The Vanished Brochs And Borgs" of Kirkwall begins by mentioning how
the town was ringed by brochs and borgs. These he names as; Work Farm HY47471350 (material dumped in 1963 at HY47691359) , Berstane HY47521002 , Inganess HY39031277 (if Ingshowe) , ?Hillhead HY44720855 (demoted since 1946 from probable fort, in a field called "The Well Park", to mere 75x55 yard
enclosure) Lingro HY43450878 , Tofts Farm HY43640936 (the Brough of Harbuster) , Pickaquoy (?Muddisdale HY43611089).
On my way down to the Sand of Wideford, usually referred to as Inganess, I mused on what Inganess Broch might be if not
Ingshowe :- First candidate at the Head of Holland the North Taing Cairn HY48971233 (with earthfast stones 10m to NW running up clifftop)
only a semi-circle now, or else the much disturbed quarry at HY48971208.Not far from Berstane Broch is a natural feature called Brough HY47420965 that many millenia hence will be a very short arch
or else a rockstack. A difficult ridge to it and not really big enough to have ever held a structure methinks.Coming down to 'Inganess beach' (the Sand of Wideford) on the section of road between the reservoir track and the farm of
Inganess looking to the left is a familiar broch shape. Further down looking back uphill the three elements resolve
themselves into several side by side mounds with earth exposed HY469095-6. These could well be the two or three low tumuli
Petrie Notes near Towerhill (in one of which a 1.7m cist held a crouched burial) though they are the same distance from
Inganess farm. This could explain the failure in locating RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY40NE 2 at Towerhill HY463095.Down in the valley Grimsquoy could be several man-made mounds or one large one very heavily quarried and then later
re-shaped, rather than mainly natural as they say. The sheepfold was made of stones taken from two of the present mounds
which reminds me slightly of Point of Buckquoy Mound 1/A. At the east end of the beach does Howe Clett among the rocks refer
to Grimsquoy or a long since gone mound on the coast above this feature ?Further around above a sub-bay the Essonquoy Mound HY49010838 lies inside the airport fence among natural mounds,
distinguished by several large slabs. Unfortunately I haven't managed to spot it from the path.Further around, where a double line occurs before the disused ship dock, was the approximate position of a group of mounds
called The Roondles HY495090.Using the common association of brochs and earthhouses I note the Yinstay Souterrain HY50841031, excavated in 1906 next to a
survey cairn (the original entrance was not found). A standing stone may once have been nearby.
Beyond the Sand of Essonquoy you come to a place where the internal airport road emerges to carry on towards Tankerness.
Where it turns to go uphill (up the hill mostly buried stones line left the first straight of road) there is a part of the
shore where small boats go down. Between here (from roughly HY49480876) and HY49460895 (about where The Roondles were) is a
stretch of standing stones. Last time I went I made out a pattern along the coastal edge of tall, two short, tall, two short.
Today the grass was too tall to locate smaller stones. First some distance from the road turn I saw one only 0.9x0.4m, 3.3m
from a fence pillar. About 55m further on the next is at right angles, 1.1x0.5m with a 'bobble' on top. Thirty-odd metres
away a low one 0.4x0.3. 5.1m further on a utility-blade shape 1.2x0.4m. The last two are another 70m away. These are on the
shore and at right angles. The first is 2.9m from the coastal edge and 1x0.4x0.1m. 5m from this is a utility blade shape
1.2x0.3m, not quite aligned to the first. Definitely a full stop to the array of standing stones.
I continued past the ship dock to the small headland below Weethick Farm, when I felt constrained by time not to try for
Long Ayre and the noosts. Tide still quite a ways out. Coming back I made out a heap of stones far away at the water's edge.
The way they seemed arranged aroused my curiosity. So I strolled over. Not an illusion from a fault plane, definitely piled
up stuff. Not gravelly bits and not beachy rocks. Hefty blighters. All half-a-metre or more. Various shapes, some slab-like
and several coloured rounded boulders. All I could think of was someone droppped anchor there. Very rum. Back along the beach
I picked up a long contoured stone, only slightly longer than my hand, that fitted into my palm to the manner born. Had I
found some tool I wondered. But I had no-one to confer with, and being sure of short shrift if I took it to anyone
knowledgeable regretfully left it behind. A little further on I picked up a very small boulder that had graded colours, black
to red to natural as if it had been against some ancient fire and tempered by it. Remembering the stone pile I thought burnt
mound thoughts. Just fancy I guess. Thinking back on it now The Roondles are a likelier connection - this last fortnight I
have read several instances of dismembered sites having their material dumped on the shore.
On my walk I mistook buoys or some wicker object for the heads of a seal or seals, too still to fool me though. Only now I
looked through my binoculars again and the eyes had it. Static head now turned and watched me, silent watcher of my
discoveries uncovered. Another day sealed.
September 25th 2004 I TAING YOU
If anyone asked me what there was before there was before Kirkwall I would say Berstane. The tun goes from at least
Berstane itself (overlooking Inganess Bay) to Quoyberstane (overlooking the Bay of Kirkwall), with the three-headed beast to
the north (Head of Holland, Head of Work, Car Ness).
By the road above Quoyberstane is another one of those big wooden posts in a former stone's setting. My task today was to
go and check up on the North Taing Cairn. From a distance. Going up the Head of Work road almost up to the water board's no
entry sign. Another longing look at Long Cairn, waiting till the grass dies down a bit to visit it. Then looking over to the
Head of Holland. Last time I had been here I'd dismissed a rise at the end as simply an illusion caused by a minor headland
arc. Now I was armed with the proper info it was obviously the cairn HY48971233 seen end on. It is described as semi-circular and the possible walling once seen is now known to be an earthen bank. 'In the flesh' it
is more of a stretched D. Which to my mind puts it in the class of semi-broch. These were said to be exactly as the phrase
says, with the cliff taking the place of a man-made wall in a normal construction. Nowadays they are dismissed as being
simply the usual broch with its back end destroyed by erosion. But if this were the remains of a semi-broch it would prove
that the class really exists, as at North Taing the cliff-face does not appear to fulfill the function of a rear wall and it
is instead open to the landward side. I was looking down a long line of fences and decided to turn my back on them to look in the exact opposite direction. Not
expecting anything imagine my surprise to be pointing straight at the Crossietown settlement. On CANMAP this line also passes
through the site of Blackhall above Weyland Bay, with Castlegreen just to the north of this (and along the short piece of
road where the Carness road turns up before making another turn for Castlegreen and Car Ness). Probably signifying nothing. A
line from Long Cairn to Crossietown passes through the Carness farmstead.
I have a feeling that something should be in the vicinity of Cleat Farm as the long low rise abouthands of it otherwise
'hides' Inganess Bay from view. Down at the Bay of Weyland I saw a young couple walking by the shore who appeared to be
looking at the rocks in places. Geologists or archaeologists perhaps. Most of the shore is a mess, a dumping ground for stone
of all ages from all over. I would love someone to do a geofizz of the turf here, there has to be some good stuff here. But
even away from the shore I expect instrumentation or digging could well just bring a little more confusion alas.
September 26th 2004 TAINGGO
Walking along the Berstane Road I stopped by the end of the Seatter footpath. Across at the Head of Holland I now saw
North Taing Cairn full on, just to the left of the cathedral quarry but viewed from about the same distance as yesterday.
Another site crying out for investigation. Behind me is a triangular section of land that arouses my interest too. The main
Berstane Road then turns right. At the first field junction on the right is a lone standing stone. Then nothing much till you
turn right to go to 'Inganess beach'.
Down to the Sand of Wideford. Took a look at my Tower Hill 'tumuli'. Actually they total four in number, but Petrie may have
meant that not all were explored or else some appeared natural. I suppose they could still be relict sand dunes, though I
really hae my doots. Down at the beach I saw three red-breasted mergansers in the bay being pestered by gulls.
Despite the horrid weather I decided to try again to find the Essonquoy Mound now that I had the map better fixed in my
mind. The rain actually helped, making a slab stand out darkly from the vegetation covering it. And a few pale slabs
elsewhere. Near the fence with the deep ruts of a farm track passing in front of it. To my mind not quite where the dot
places it. The mound appears much disturbed and along an edge is the remains of a wall built from big blocks of conglomerate
rather than the usual breezeblock. From here I could see North Taing Cairn still, though much further away now. Now appearing much further to the left of the
quarry. Only a little further along it disappeared from sight. By contrast, apart from a few minutes here and there, the red
sandstone quarry is visible almost everywhere. It is like a second Hoy. I find it difficult to believe there was never
anything of significance on it, like Edinburgh without the castle. But quarrying is just too good there. As I walked beside the Sand of Essonquoy I saw the mergansers again. And more besides. In recent years it has been
possible to see as many as four or five of a family near Kirkwall harbour, but in the bay here I managed to count sixteen.
And there could have been more than that. A massing magnificence.
Reaching the 'slip' where the road through the airport turns I looked across at the two stones that end my line of
standing stones. From the road as it goes uphill you can see all except the shorter stones. The first field ditch along the
road's LH edge shows nothing. It is the second one (HY49650871 to 49640871) that has a line of mostly buried standing stones/
slabs. It ends where a proper stone lies flat in the grass. This feels like a trivia (a meeting of three ways). There is a
large irregularly shaped angular boulder a short distance along the field edge that goes to my left, possibly another along
from it. With my binoculars I see standing stones further along, but too many fenceposts and pillars at a congested part of
the field system for me to 'get a handle on them'. Needs to be dry weather to pursue further, as I feel I should. Looking up to my right I see a standing stone to the right of the house (The Mount) atop the lane. It is the long thin
shape of a steak-knife blade. Further up on the left is a utilty-knife shaped standing stone HY49880875 on the field edge. It
is 1.4x0.5m. This stone is on a line with the barbwire field fence on the opposite side of the road, with the steaknife stone
at that field's furthest edge HY49830866. In this field of which The Mount forms a corner in 1990 was found a small
collection of Mesolithic flints Slap o'Valdigar HY499086. At the LH side of the Tankerness road junction here a pillar HY50010871 is embedded in a big lump of concrete. There's a
rough stone setting on the downhill side which I don't think is old, though this could be the result of gross disturbance.
If you turn left here you come to the dump at the bottom of the hill. There's a possible standing stone here. This quarry
is the site of the Howies of Bossack. They were also known, like several other sites in Orkney, as The Five Hillocks. It is a
pity that they were removed, as their description as clay mounds raises questions we cannot now answer.
September 25th 2004 I TAING YOU
If anyone asked me what there was before there was before Kirkwall I would say Berstane. The tun goes from at least
Berstane itself (overlooking Inganess Bay) to Quoyberstane (overlooking the Bay of Kirkwall), with the three-headed beast to
the north (Head of Holland, Head of Work, Car Ness).
By the road above Quoyberstane is another one of those big wooden posts in a former stone's setting. My task today was to
go and check up on the North Taing Cairn. From a distance. Going up the Head of Work road almost up to the water board's no
entry sign. Another longing look at Long Cairn, waiting till the grass dies down a bit to visit it. Then looking over to the
Head of Holland. Last time I had been here I'd dismissed a rise at the end as simply an illusion caused by a minor headland
arc. Now I was armed with the proper info it was obviously the cairn HY48971233 seen end on. It is described as semi-circular and the possible walling once seen is now known to be an earthen bank. 'In the flesh' it
is more of a stretched D. Which to my mind puts it in the class of semi-broch. These were said to be exactly as the phrase
says, with the cliff taking the place of a man-made wall in a normal construction. Nowadays they are dismissed as being
simply the usual broch with its back end destroyed by erosion. But if this were the remains of a semi-broch it would prove
that the class really exists, as at North Taing the cliff-face does not appear to fulfill the function of a rear wall and it
is instead open to the landward side. I was looking down a long line of fences and decided to turn my back on them to look in the exact opposite direction. Not
expecting anything imagine my surprise to be pointing straight at the Crossietown settlement. On CANMAP this line also passes
through the site of Blackhall above Weyland Bay, with Castlegreen just to the north of this (and along the short piece of
road where the Carness road turns up before making another turn for Castlegreen and Car Ness). Probably signifying nothing. A
line from Long Cairn to Crossietown passes through the Carness farmstead.
I have a feeling that something should be in the vicinity of Cleat Farm as the long low rise abouthands of it otherwise
'hides' Inganess Bay from view. Down at the Bay of Weyland I saw a young couple walking by the shore who appeared to be
looking at the rocks in places. Geologists or archaeologists perhaps. Most of the shore is a mess, a dumping ground for stone
of all ages from all over. I would love someone to do a geofizz of the turf here, there has to be some good stuff here. But
even away from the shore I expect instrumentation or digging could well just bring a little more confusion alas.
September 26th 2004 TAINGGO
Walking along the Berstane Road I stopped by the end of the Seatter footpath. Across at the Head of Holland I now saw
North Taing Cairn full on, just to the left of the cathedral quarry but viewed from about the same distance as yesterday.
Another site crying out for investigation. Behind me is a triangular section of land that arouses my interest too. The main
Berstane Road then turns right. At the first field junction on the right is a lone standing stone. Then nothing much till you
turn right to go to 'Inganess beach'.
Down to the Sand of Wideford. Took a look at my Tower Hill 'tumuli'. Actually they total four in number, but Petrie may have
meant that not all were explored or else some appeared natural. I suppose they could still be relict sand dunes, though I
really hae my doots. Down at the beach I saw three red-breasted mergansers in the bay being pestered by gulls.
Despite the horrid weather I decided to try again to find the Essonquoy Mound now that I had the map better fixed in my
mind. The rain actually helped, making a slab stand out darkly from the vegetation covering it. And a few pale slabs
elsewhere. Near the fence with the deep ruts of a farm track passing in front of it. To my mind not quite where the dot
places it. The mound appears much disturbed and along an edge is the remains of a wall built from big blocks of conglomerate
rather than the usual breezeblock. From here I could see North Taing Cairn still, though much further away now. Now appearing much further to the left of the
quarry. Only a little further along it disappeared from sight. By contrast, apart from a few minutes here and there, the red
sandstone quarry is visible almost everywhere. It is like a second Hoy. I find it difficult to believe there was never
anything of significance on it, like Edinburgh without the castle. But quarrying is just too good there. As I walked beside the Sand of Essonquoy I saw the mergansers again. And more besides. In recent years it has been
possible to see as many as four or five of a family near Kirkwall harbour, but in the bay here I managed to count sixteen.
And there could have been more than that. A massing magnificence.
Reaching the 'slip' where the road through the airport turns I looked across at the two stones that end my line of
standing stones. From the road as it goes uphill you can see all except the shorter stones. The first field ditch along the
road's LH edge shows nothing. It is the second one (HY49650871 to 49640871) that has a line of mostly buried standing stones/
slabs. It ends where a proper stone lies flat in the grass. This feels like a trivia (a meeting of three ways). There is a
large irregularly shaped angular boulder a short distance along the field edge that goes to my left, possibly another along
from it. With my binoculars I see standing stones further along, but too many fenceposts and pillars at a congested part of
the field system for me to 'get a handle on them'. Needs to be dry weather to pursue further, as I feel I should. Looking up to my right I see a standing stone to the right of the house (The Mount) atop the lane. It is the long thin
shape of a steak-knife blade. Further up on the left is a utilty-knife shaped standing stone HY49880875 on the field edge. It
is 1.4x0.5m. This stone is on a line with the barbwire field fence on the opposite side of the road, with the steaknife stone
at that field's furthest edge HY49830866. In this field of which The Mount forms a corner in 1990 was found a small
collection of Mesolithic flints Slap o'Valdigar HY499086. At the LH side of the Tankerness road junction here a pillar HY50010871 is embedded in a big lump of concrete. There's a
rough stone setting on the downhill side which I don't think is old, though this could be the result of gross disturbance.
If you turn left here you come to the dump at the bottom of the hill. There's a possible standing stone here. This quarry
is the site of the Howies of Bossack. They were also known, like several other sites in Orkney, as The Five Hillocks. It is a
pity that they were removed, as their description as clay mounds raises questions we cannot now answer.