Sunday, October 16, 2005
ORPHIR GLEANINGS
sites from The Orphir Book
On p.18 Omond writes of stone cists being found in several mounds near Kebro (HY 352 106). The cist he gives specifics for would appear to be that listed as HY31SE 11. It is described as being found close to the roadside atop the hill at Skaill. The dimensions were 23½" x 13½" x 15½" and it was aligned E/W and held a child's skeleton. This slab-lined cist's top was held on with a tough non-native red clay.
Pages 18-9 adds to the limited knowledge of HY30NE 19. The graveyard consisted of tiers of graves about 3' x 2' alongside each other, covering nearly one-quarter acre.
On p.19 he writes that, roughly 30 years before, the reclining skeleton of a six-foot man was found under a large slab after a mound was removed from "a field of Hobister" (Hobbister Farm HY 387 072).
On page 22 is a mention of the 'chambered cinerary urns' at Gyre.
Gyre sites
In Johnston's book his 1820 map shows several sites not on Canmore for which I have determined NGRs. Above the stackyard of Gyre he shows a findspot for urns (HY 3403 0473), one for bones and ashes (HY 3418 0447) at the Hall of Gyre and in Nut-field (roughly HY 340 043) below that foundations were found [this was known as Moss Park until hazelnuts turned up in the bog]. To the W, by the Bu boundary (in what became known as Church-field before being added to House-field to form Gear Field), were found more foundations also bones & ashes and stone implements (HY 3376 0450).
On page 26 he expands on the urns, describing them as found at the top of the breck above Gyre and containing bones & ashes, then adding that of the several only the last did he find himself. The term he uses is 'chambered cinerary urn', which Anne Brundle of the Orkney Museum believes to have been used at the time to describe cists with divisions. Which of course brings up the double cist HY30SW 12 found alongside the stackyard in 1974 - Anne agrees with me that we could, therefore, be dealing with the remains of a barrow cemetery. Hugh Halcro-Johnston, the owner of Orphir House (the former Hall of Gyre), informs us that the corrugated sheeting has been removed from the double cist and it is disintegrating rapidly.
Last week I went to Gyre to look at the 'urn' site. Amazingly it is still unenclosed occupying an area several metres in either direction that lies between the section of road above the stackyard and the field boundary walls. There are a few stones that appear to be the top of a short section of walling, but as the late 19th century road cuts through an older arrangement they are probably connected with that rather than the findspot.
Above the stackyard of Gyre is the findspot (HY34030473) for what A.W. Johnston called 'chambered cinerary urns', which Anne Brundle of the Orkney Museum believes to have been used at the time to describe cists with divisions. It can be no coincidence that in 1974 a double cist HY30SW 12 was found by the stackyard the other side of the road (HY34090464). The archaeologist kind of agrees with me that this could be the remains of a barrow cemetery. If the interpretation of Johnston's term is correct what is the reason for such a number of double cists in one location ?
HY30SW 16 and 11
The site of HY30SW 16 is in the area shown by by Johnston on the two maps between p.12-3 & 14-15, to both of which he has added the name Harproo in the relevant position - it is depicted as a square structure/foundations on the second of these.
Harproo is a stream-name, and at the time of my visit a shallow stream proceeded over the present farmtrack down to the beach from the Bu road. This was an old hill dyke similar in dimensions to that close by Kongarsknowe, being just over a metre deep and approximately 6m across where it meets the shore.On the cliff-top either side the drystone wall is terminated in lichen-covered stones on the order of a metre high. Fairly standard. But sitting on the base of the 'trench' is a stone of a very different character (HY33190413). It is a head higher than any other stones in Orphir. It differs from the other stones in being completely devoid of lichen and having the colouration typical of stones that have been in the vicinity of a farmyard all the time. I am firmly of the opinion that this is HY30SW 11, the Bu of Orphir standing stone, transplanted. With the other stones it has several 'loose' modern gates roped across. This stone is 1.9m high and 0.2m thick, is 0.6m across the base (which appears to be stone-packed) tapering to 0.3m at the top.
Though I was ignorant of it at the time my photos reveal I may have Yarproo in the cliff close to the RH stone as several stones about half a metre below the cliff-top in an area about a metre across and ?under half deep.
Kongarsknowe
Also shown on Johnston's 1820 map, below Congasquoy, is Kongarsknowe (HY 3446 0513) with the date 1797. The folklore miscellany on pages 15-16 relates how the recently deceased Fortescue of Swanbister had wanted to excavate this mound (alternative names The Fairy-brae of Congesquoy, Congesquoy Hillock, Konger's Knowe) but was dissuaded from his investigation of the "old landmark" by James Flett in Lerquoy. An article on Swanbister in the "Farmer's Monthly Journal" in 1877 refers to improvements made in the area in the previous decades, including the slab fences around Congesquoy, that strongly suggest this as dating from that time. On page 26 Johnston refers to it as Congarsknowe tumulus in the vicinity of the old King's Highroad. By analogy with Congesquoy near the Bu of Cairston the name could be read as a quoy acquired by an earl, but for this site at least I am persuaded that it is indeed Kongar 'king's farm', possibly referring to the Swanbister region (though there is also a personal name Kongar/Konger).
As you go down the road to Gyre Kongarsknowe is on the left a couple of field's away from the road. Last week I tried a direct approach. Unfortunately the old hill dyke boundary is a formidable obstacle still, broad and deep and mired in vegetation, so at first I had to content myself with standing on top of the almost buried wall this side of the dyke. [On trying to find a way further down I thought I was in luck when I saw two tall stones across the dyke, but though I thought there were other materials there I could not see through the plants. Only after I came back did I realise that this was the old gate in the boundary referred to by Johnston (HY347050) else I would certainly have taken preliminary photos and measurements. It resembles the common farm gate using middling standing stones for posts, only with a width more on the order of a domestic garden gate]. Going back up the road I entered the quarry field (used for building the slab fences hereabouts in the early to mid-19th century) and from the opposite corner (whose 'Orkney gate' was thankfully down) walked across into the Kongarsknowe field. At present there is a large circular pool of water by the lower half of the turf-covered mound, probably in a natural depression. What was most necessary was to find out the knowe's composition. Even from afar I had seen exposed bits. Looked like the usual earth with a few small stones. Only up real close did this reveal itself to be mostly ?decayed rock, probably sandstone. Though there appeared to be no signs of structure I cannot believe this to be a (wholly) natural mound. Unable to tell its shape and there was too much wind for the tape measure. It paced out to about 70m around the steeper, unploughed, main bit. From here the mound slopes more gradually until it peters out somewhat over 90m circumference. The central portion (? rocky core) is well over two meters high (possibly three) and the 'base' another metre below that.
Bibliography
1) "Farmer's Monthly Journal" of February 1877.
2) "Round Church and Earl's Bu of Orphir" by Alfred W.Johnston (private printing Curtis & Beamish 1903).
3) "The Parish : Its History" by James Omond, from "The Book of Orphir" ed. by Reverend J.A.Stephen (1910).
4) Volume 8 of "Old Lore Miscellany of Orkney, Shetland, Caithness and Sutherland" ed. by A.W. & A.Johnston (1920).
sites from The Orphir Book
On p.18 Omond writes of stone cists being found in several mounds near Kebro (HY 352 106). The cist he gives specifics for would appear to be that listed as HY31SE 11. It is described as being found close to the roadside atop the hill at Skaill. The dimensions were 23½" x 13½" x 15½" and it was aligned E/W and held a child's skeleton. This slab-lined cist's top was held on with a tough non-native red clay.
Pages 18-9 adds to the limited knowledge of HY30NE 19. The graveyard consisted of tiers of graves about 3' x 2' alongside each other, covering nearly one-quarter acre.
On p.19 he writes that, roughly 30 years before, the reclining skeleton of a six-foot man was found under a large slab after a mound was removed from "a field of Hobister" (Hobbister Farm HY 387 072).
On page 22 is a mention of the 'chambered cinerary urns' at Gyre.
Gyre sites
In Johnston's book his 1820 map shows several sites not on Canmore for which I have determined NGRs. Above the stackyard of Gyre he shows a findspot for urns (HY 3403 0473), one for bones and ashes (HY 3418 0447) at the Hall of Gyre and in Nut-field (roughly HY 340 043) below that foundations were found [this was known as Moss Park until hazelnuts turned up in the bog]. To the W, by the Bu boundary (in what became known as Church-field before being added to House-field to form Gear Field), were found more foundations also bones & ashes and stone implements (HY 3376 0450).
On page 26 he expands on the urns, describing them as found at the top of the breck above Gyre and containing bones & ashes, then adding that of the several only the last did he find himself. The term he uses is 'chambered cinerary urn', which Anne Brundle of the Orkney Museum believes to have been used at the time to describe cists with divisions. Which of course brings up the double cist HY30SW 12 found alongside the stackyard in 1974 - Anne agrees with me that we could, therefore, be dealing with the remains of a barrow cemetery. Hugh Halcro-Johnston, the owner of Orphir House (the former Hall of Gyre), informs us that the corrugated sheeting has been removed from the double cist and it is disintegrating rapidly.
Last week I went to Gyre to look at the 'urn' site. Amazingly it is still unenclosed occupying an area several metres in either direction that lies between the section of road above the stackyard and the field boundary walls. There are a few stones that appear to be the top of a short section of walling, but as the late 19th century road cuts through an older arrangement they are probably connected with that rather than the findspot.
Above the stackyard of Gyre is the findspot (HY34030473) for what A.W. Johnston called 'chambered cinerary urns', which Anne Brundle of the Orkney Museum believes to have been used at the time to describe cists with divisions. It can be no coincidence that in 1974 a double cist HY30SW 12 was found by the stackyard the other side of the road (HY34090464). The archaeologist kind of agrees with me that this could be the remains of a barrow cemetery. If the interpretation of Johnston's term is correct what is the reason for such a number of double cists in one location ?
HY30SW 16 and 11
The site of HY30SW 16 is in the area shown by by Johnston on the two maps between p.12-3 & 14-15, to both of which he has added the name Harproo in the relevant position - it is depicted as a square structure/foundations on the second of these.
Harproo is a stream-name, and at the time of my visit a shallow stream proceeded over the present farmtrack down to the beach from the Bu road. This was an old hill dyke similar in dimensions to that close by Kongarsknowe, being just over a metre deep and approximately 6m across where it meets the shore.On the cliff-top either side the drystone wall is terminated in lichen-covered stones on the order of a metre high. Fairly standard. But sitting on the base of the 'trench' is a stone of a very different character (HY33190413). It is a head higher than any other stones in Orphir. It differs from the other stones in being completely devoid of lichen and having the colouration typical of stones that have been in the vicinity of a farmyard all the time. I am firmly of the opinion that this is HY30SW 11, the Bu of Orphir standing stone, transplanted. With the other stones it has several 'loose' modern gates roped across. This stone is 1.9m high and 0.2m thick, is 0.6m across the base (which appears to be stone-packed) tapering to 0.3m at the top.
Though I was ignorant of it at the time my photos reveal I may have Yarproo in the cliff close to the RH stone as several stones about half a metre below the cliff-top in an area about a metre across and ?under half deep.
Kongarsknowe
Also shown on Johnston's 1820 map, below Congasquoy, is Kongarsknowe (HY 3446 0513) with the date 1797. The folklore miscellany on pages 15-16 relates how the recently deceased Fortescue of Swanbister had wanted to excavate this mound (alternative names The Fairy-brae of Congesquoy, Congesquoy Hillock, Konger's Knowe) but was dissuaded from his investigation of the "old landmark" by James Flett in Lerquoy. An article on Swanbister in the "Farmer's Monthly Journal" in 1877 refers to improvements made in the area in the previous decades, including the slab fences around Congesquoy, that strongly suggest this as dating from that time. On page 26 Johnston refers to it as Congarsknowe tumulus in the vicinity of the old King's Highroad. By analogy with Congesquoy near the Bu of Cairston the name could be read as a quoy acquired by an earl, but for this site at least I am persuaded that it is indeed Kongar 'king's farm', possibly referring to the Swanbister region (though there is also a personal name Kongar/Konger).
As you go down the road to Gyre Kongarsknowe is on the left a couple of field's away from the road. Last week I tried a direct approach. Unfortunately the old hill dyke boundary is a formidable obstacle still, broad and deep and mired in vegetation, so at first I had to content myself with standing on top of the almost buried wall this side of the dyke. [On trying to find a way further down I thought I was in luck when I saw two tall stones across the dyke, but though I thought there were other materials there I could not see through the plants. Only after I came back did I realise that this was the old gate in the boundary referred to by Johnston (HY347050) else I would certainly have taken preliminary photos and measurements. It resembles the common farm gate using middling standing stones for posts, only with a width more on the order of a domestic garden gate]. Going back up the road I entered the quarry field (used for building the slab fences hereabouts in the early to mid-19th century) and from the opposite corner (whose 'Orkney gate' was thankfully down) walked across into the Kongarsknowe field. At present there is a large circular pool of water by the lower half of the turf-covered mound, probably in a natural depression. What was most necessary was to find out the knowe's composition. Even from afar I had seen exposed bits. Looked like the usual earth with a few small stones. Only up real close did this reveal itself to be mostly ?decayed rock, probably sandstone. Though there appeared to be no signs of structure I cannot believe this to be a (wholly) natural mound. Unable to tell its shape and there was too much wind for the tape measure. It paced out to about 70m around the steeper, unploughed, main bit. From here the mound slopes more gradually until it peters out somewhat over 90m circumference. The central portion (? rocky core) is well over two meters high (possibly three) and the 'base' another metre below that.
Bibliography
1) "Farmer's Monthly Journal" of February 1877.
2) "Round Church and Earl's Bu of Orphir" by Alfred W.Johnston (private printing Curtis & Beamish 1903).
3) "The Parish : Its History" by James Omond, from "The Book of Orphir" ed. by Reverend J.A.Stephen (1910).
4) Volume 8 of "Old Lore Miscellany of Orkney, Shetland, Caithness and Sutherland" ed. by A.W. & A.Johnston (1920).
INTERIM BLOG
Friday I took off on a walk to Orphir to make further investigations around Gyre.
As you go down towards Gyre you can see Konger's Knowe on the left a couple of field's away from the road, so I decided to essay that first. Unfortunately the old field dyke boundary is a formidable obstacle still, broad and deep and mired in vegetation, so I had to content myself with standing on top of the almost buried wall this side of the dyke. On trying to find a way further down I thought I was in luck when I saw two tall stones across the dyke, but though I thought there were other materials there I could not see through the plants. Only after I came back did I realise that this was the old gate in the boundary referred to by Johnston (HY347050) else I would certainly have taken preliminary photos and measurements. I had not expected an actual physical entity surviving to now. Think of a farm gate using middling standing stones for posts only with a width nearer to that of a domestic garden gate. Quite the thing. I shall have to go back next year when the entire site is rather more visible !
So I struck back across the line that connects to the bit of road that goes over Gyre to have a look for the site from whence the 'chambered cinerary urns' came. Again I expected nothing, the modern road cutting through the farmtracks that were. So I was surprised to find that this section had not been taken for fields. Between the piece of road above the stackyard (along whose western side the recorded double cist lies) and the drystane fieldwall is still all open ground. There are a few stones but these appear to be the top of a mostly buried wall. So at least for know the site is preserved for the future. Seeing the area between here and the stackyard in person I see no reason why this could not be a small cemetery like Queenafiold. But why all those double cists ??
Then going back up the road I entered the quarry field (used for building the slab fences hereabouts in the early to mid-19th century) and from the opposite corner (whose 'Orkney gate' was thankfully down) walked across into the Kongarsknowe field. At present there is a large circular pool of water by the lower half of the turf-covered mound, probably in a natural depression. What was most necessary was to find out the knowe's composition. Even from afar I had seen exposed bits. Looked like the usual earth with a few small stones. Only up real close did this reveal itself to be mostly ?decayed rock, probably sandstone. Though there appeared to be no signs of structure I cannot believe this to be a (wholly) natural mound. Unable to tell its shape and there was too much wind for the tape measure. It paced out to about 70m around the steeper, unploughed, main bit. From here the mound slopes more gradually until it peters out somewhat over 90m circumference. The central portion (? rocky core) is well over two meters high (possibly three) and the 'base' another metre below that.
Johnston marks its first appearance on paper to 1797. Likely about the time the slab fences were being built by Fortescue of Swanbister (as reported in "The Farmers Journal" of February 1877) according to "Old Lore Miscellany..." he "wished to investigate the Fairy-brae of Congesquoy" but was warned by James Flett in Lerquoy not to dig this "old landmark". Marwick in his book on field-names says that the Congesquoy near the Bu of Cairston probably indicated a quoy acquired by an earl. Here the Upper and Lower Congesquoy appear late and IIRC are within the commonalty [which I have not marked on my amalgamated map]. However Johnston's 1820 map shows Congasquoy (sic) to the other side of the dividing line, and Kongar instead means ' king's farm ' (as in Consgar). Of course Konger is also a Scandinavian personal name. Which means it could possibly be named after an individual instead.
Friday I took off on a walk to Orphir to make further investigations around Gyre.
As you go down towards Gyre you can see Konger's Knowe on the left a couple of field's away from the road, so I decided to essay that first. Unfortunately the old field dyke boundary is a formidable obstacle still, broad and deep and mired in vegetation, so I had to content myself with standing on top of the almost buried wall this side of the dyke. On trying to find a way further down I thought I was in luck when I saw two tall stones across the dyke, but though I thought there were other materials there I could not see through the plants. Only after I came back did I realise that this was the old gate in the boundary referred to by Johnston (HY347050) else I would certainly have taken preliminary photos and measurements. I had not expected an actual physical entity surviving to now. Think of a farm gate using middling standing stones for posts only with a width nearer to that of a domestic garden gate. Quite the thing. I shall have to go back next year when the entire site is rather more visible !
So I struck back across the line that connects to the bit of road that goes over Gyre to have a look for the site from whence the 'chambered cinerary urns' came. Again I expected nothing, the modern road cutting through the farmtracks that were. So I was surprised to find that this section had not been taken for fields. Between the piece of road above the stackyard (along whose western side the recorded double cist lies) and the drystane fieldwall is still all open ground. There are a few stones but these appear to be the top of a mostly buried wall. So at least for know the site is preserved for the future. Seeing the area between here and the stackyard in person I see no reason why this could not be a small cemetery like Queenafiold. But why all those double cists ??
Then going back up the road I entered the quarry field (used for building the slab fences hereabouts in the early to mid-19th century) and from the opposite corner (whose 'Orkney gate' was thankfully down) walked across into the Kongarsknowe field. At present there is a large circular pool of water by the lower half of the turf-covered mound, probably in a natural depression. What was most necessary was to find out the knowe's composition. Even from afar I had seen exposed bits. Looked like the usual earth with a few small stones. Only up real close did this reveal itself to be mostly ?decayed rock, probably sandstone. Though there appeared to be no signs of structure I cannot believe this to be a (wholly) natural mound. Unable to tell its shape and there was too much wind for the tape measure. It paced out to about 70m around the steeper, unploughed, main bit. From here the mound slopes more gradually until it peters out somewhat over 90m circumference. The central portion (? rocky core) is well over two meters high (possibly three) and the 'base' another metre below that.
Johnston marks its first appearance on paper to 1797. Likely about the time the slab fences were being built by Fortescue of Swanbister (as reported in "The Farmers Journal" of February 1877) according to "Old Lore Miscellany..." he "wished to investigate the Fairy-brae of Congesquoy" but was warned by James Flett in Lerquoy not to dig this "old landmark". Marwick in his book on field-names says that the Congesquoy near the Bu of Cairston probably indicated a quoy acquired by an earl. Here the Upper and Lower Congesquoy appear late and IIRC are within the commonalty [which I have not marked on my amalgamated map]. However Johnston's 1820 map shows Congasquoy (sic) to the other side of the dividing line, and Kongar instead means ' king's farm ' (as in Consgar). Of course Konger is also a Scandinavian personal name. Which means it could possibly be named after an individual instead.
SKAILL August 7th 2005
Third open day, Castle of Snusgar, and finally the weather came good. All the live long day ! Good job this is the season buses go to Skaill, but this still meant a long time before the visitation. Keeping my perambulation tighter around the area this time around. A few check-ups and another attempt to reach a site. Six pounds to get into Skara Brae - no, thanks. Any way I had my own fish fry.
Straightforth from the visitors centre, then passing the church and on to Linnahowe. Not expecting much at this time of year and so pleasantly surprised to find no rank vegetation here to veil the scant archaeological evidentiae. Coming down the turn in the track you see a few stones in the northern end of the mound. Not much to show structure really, these could be the exposed back of a big shallow excavation. As you pass by the side there are even smaller and fewer stones to be seen near to the southern end that possibly curve in a line through to where woody plants such as nettles line the silage pit cut. According to the farmer responsible for the latter there was no trace of any structure found during the operation, only scattered stones and bones. This end is much higher now but may not have been so before as halfway up the cut I could see thick wavy black edges like plastic wrap, as if material from the cut had been used to build up the sides above this level. Unfortunately some modern stone and concrete has also been brought in so that one cannot from the totality of material even make a guess as to what really was there in the gap. The present-day farmer was even more interested in me than the kie at the site were, and it is difficult to relate your attraction to such an apparently bare spectacle. Eventually we grew bored with the silences in between !
Next stop the Knowe of Verron to check for damage. On the way thinking yet again about the middling hillock below the church. Presumably simply a field cut off by the modern road, or how else to explain the arc of 'standing stone fence' about a thing that has no name or history ? No damage done to the broch thankfully. I looked at little bridge under the drystane wall etc. the cliffside section of the church road. Obviously at some stage the road has been widened, for as at the grander one by Lesliedale (in St.Ola) close inspection reveals halfway along the passage a stone going clean across. With above road bridges you can often tell road-widening by the totally different structures about the stream either side., the original other end now buried under the road surface. To the other side of the stream there is a kind of pit with a few large stones which I suspect to be connected with the Viking burials - or simply a kelp-pit !!
My last target was the Knowe of Geoso, once thought to be a broch but no longer (wrong kind of place doncha know). At the end my last failure I had finally worked out where it lay from the Skaill House Farm (formerly The Mount) track. Most obvious route is along fieldwalls direct up from the farmhouse,.but there was some kind of horsey do going on. Instead from Skaill House you can see a farmtrack going all the way uphill to a large depression marked as a disused quarry, and this was my chosen route. For Orkney this is a fairsized quarry in area at least (not all that deep). Must go back when the grass dies down as Oldmaps does not show this as a quarry but does show a well by the lower lip. The depression is in the top right of the field and the adjacent field corner is where Brockan was (HY23041798) that led to the earlier broch identification, the knowe being visible by the diagonally opposite corner (could it have been the original Mount ?). No entry to that field from here. So I passed into the next field. At the top of this is the ridge going up to the site and along it in the other direction somewhere are other tumuli of which the named ones are the Knowe of Nebigarth (possible barrow atop an eminence) and the Knowe of Angerow (a cist reportedly taken from it and a possible cist slab on a more mutilated mound). A brilliant view from here over to the Yesnaby area including looking down on the Broch of Borwick (so many indentations in the coast you think yourself miles from a place when really you are, in vehicular terms, 'next-door'. Which is why in the Northern Isles boats were the thing). Magnified look at Geoso showed what at the time looked like a small man-made mound by a flattened hilltop. Snuck in to the Brockan field via a crumbly wall with old barbwire fence. Worked my way along to the end but no ingress. Back was a place with a gap twixt fence and fieldwall to step between. Barbwire fence attempt but electric uh-uh. So down across the field I went. Remains of a modern building and possible old farmtrack. And the obvious signs of a multiple watercourse to explain the name Brockan - it is another 'broken slope'. Over a gate and up along the fieldwall of the preferred route.
Up on top I could see that what I had seen previously was one site, a large flattened mound with the gap seen as a curving hollow carving its way across the width of it. There's supposed to be an earthfast stone in the exact centre but if it's only just protruding it is too well hidden. On the mound I can feel shallow depressions under my feet that must be part of the quarrying done out of it. Even if the 'passage' as we see it now is the result of more of said quarrying they obviously followed the path of least resistance and it is evidence for the underlying structure (chambered mound a contemporary update of Picts-house). Looking down to Skaill you can see the whole bay and most of the land below the surrounding hills and it is obvious that the Birsay Bay Project will be incomplete without a proper modern survey of the Knowe of Geoso. This side three drystane walls make a field junction, only made into a meeting of four by a 'standing stone fence' that starts atop the mound and heads towards a coastal waterfall. Alongside the mound on that side are several large stones which the NMRS describes as an arc of earthfast stones. Those I can see don't feel like any kind of arc but instead form discrete clumps, a triangle of stones of disparate form and material and two in a depression roughly triangular but disparate in size. Perhaps if I come back when the grass is lower more stones will convince me that an arc does exist.
Rather than going down to The Mount I followed the dyke at my left. Felt like another 'broken slope' with the evidence of several watercourses and stonework in various places. I would have spent more time investigating this lovely landscape. Somewhere near my route was a well (HY22781821) and later I found on the 1882 map Rowhall (HY22861809) and Westfield (HY22831815) used to be in this area. After continuing to a fence corner I turned to head over to Skara Brae with a tight squeeze to gain the coast. An intriguing lump over by a farm and just before I scrambled down to the beach the jumbled remains of a drystone building between path and cliff edge.It is only a month later I discover that in going along the cliffs I must have passed by the sites of the back of a prehistoric structure (ruined wall at HY22921877 with midden) and a cist (HY22941876 with prehistoric stonework still close by), then by a bend in the Garricott farmtrack facing the coast a settlement mound (HY22941874).
Back up to Snusgar in time to be part of the second batch of visitors. This year they had moved onto the other side of the Castle of Snusgar mound. Even fewer signs of structures than last year. But some beautiful stratigraphy thanks to the regular influx of sand even this far from the shore, delicate layers of light and dark. Near the present base of the mound there is a stone construction. Only it is likely to be a kelp-pit from operations that the excavations have shown took place on the site in fairly recent times. This side of the hillock there is a deep sand-filled ditch probably several feet deep, and if only they had the resources they are sure something much earlier would be revealed beneath it all. Much clearer results are coming from the new mound that they are starting on. For now they are referring to it as the east mound, though I think Snusgar East would be a more appropriate nomenclature. On the way there a bairn kept piping up to ask about burials and I considered mentioning the rock-cut tomb (HY21NW 35 at HY24221955) found in the edge of Sand Fiold opposite, somewhere in the sandy hill reveal visible from here. Finally on the new mound they have come up with a proper building and perhaps another stucture as well. Must be Viking or early mediaeval as the foundations are so regular and the details so clear even to the casual observer. Unlike last year here was something worth photographing by mere mortals. It is probably relevant to bring up the discovery (at HY23691962) of the the Skaill silver hoard from yet another sandy hill, this one between here and the Castle of Snusgar if I have located Snusgar East correctly.
With more time to fill before the bus back to Stromness I went down the road by the Loch of Skaill to get as close to the peedie islet as possible. At last I had some decent snaps. Not much to look at, and when doing some other research I found that it is a modern artifice laid down by one of the Grahams of Skaill. Or so the story goes. On the way back to the visitors centre popped off the road near the northern end of the loch to have a shufty at quarry. Nothing really to report. Had a look for the well shown close to it on the 1:25,000. Struck out there. Later I was going over the 1882 on Oldmaps and noticed that it did not show said well but did mark one on the opposite shore at exactly the same easting. Shurely shome mistake. Considered walking up to the Knowe of Geoso to take measurements but decided with the time left to have my packed lunch on one of the big circular picnic tables beside the car park road the other side of the stream instead.
Third open day, Castle of Snusgar, and finally the weather came good. All the live long day ! Good job this is the season buses go to Skaill, but this still meant a long time before the visitation. Keeping my perambulation tighter around the area this time around. A few check-ups and another attempt to reach a site. Six pounds to get into Skara Brae - no, thanks. Any way I had my own fish fry.
Straightforth from the visitors centre, then passing the church and on to Linnahowe. Not expecting much at this time of year and so pleasantly surprised to find no rank vegetation here to veil the scant archaeological evidentiae. Coming down the turn in the track you see a few stones in the northern end of the mound. Not much to show structure really, these could be the exposed back of a big shallow excavation. As you pass by the side there are even smaller and fewer stones to be seen near to the southern end that possibly curve in a line through to where woody plants such as nettles line the silage pit cut. According to the farmer responsible for the latter there was no trace of any structure found during the operation, only scattered stones and bones. This end is much higher now but may not have been so before as halfway up the cut I could see thick wavy black edges like plastic wrap, as if material from the cut had been used to build up the sides above this level. Unfortunately some modern stone and concrete has also been brought in so that one cannot from the totality of material even make a guess as to what really was there in the gap. The present-day farmer was even more interested in me than the kie at the site were, and it is difficult to relate your attraction to such an apparently bare spectacle. Eventually we grew bored with the silences in between !
Next stop the Knowe of Verron to check for damage. On the way thinking yet again about the middling hillock below the church. Presumably simply a field cut off by the modern road, or how else to explain the arc of 'standing stone fence' about a thing that has no name or history ? No damage done to the broch thankfully. I looked at little bridge under the drystane wall etc. the cliffside section of the church road. Obviously at some stage the road has been widened, for as at the grander one by Lesliedale (in St.Ola) close inspection reveals halfway along the passage a stone going clean across. With above road bridges you can often tell road-widening by the totally different structures about the stream either side., the original other end now buried under the road surface. To the other side of the stream there is a kind of pit with a few large stones which I suspect to be connected with the Viking burials - or simply a kelp-pit !!
My last target was the Knowe of Geoso, once thought to be a broch but no longer (wrong kind of place doncha know). At the end my last failure I had finally worked out where it lay from the Skaill House Farm (formerly The Mount) track. Most obvious route is along fieldwalls direct up from the farmhouse,.but there was some kind of horsey do going on. Instead from Skaill House you can see a farmtrack going all the way uphill to a large depression marked as a disused quarry, and this was my chosen route. For Orkney this is a fairsized quarry in area at least (not all that deep). Must go back when the grass dies down as Oldmaps does not show this as a quarry but does show a well by the lower lip. The depression is in the top right of the field and the adjacent field corner is where Brockan was (HY23041798) that led to the earlier broch identification, the knowe being visible by the diagonally opposite corner (could it have been the original Mount ?). No entry to that field from here. So I passed into the next field. At the top of this is the ridge going up to the site and along it in the other direction somewhere are other tumuli of which the named ones are the Knowe of Nebigarth (possible barrow atop an eminence) and the Knowe of Angerow (a cist reportedly taken from it and a possible cist slab on a more mutilated mound). A brilliant view from here over to the Yesnaby area including looking down on the Broch of Borwick (so many indentations in the coast you think yourself miles from a place when really you are, in vehicular terms, 'next-door'. Which is why in the Northern Isles boats were the thing). Magnified look at Geoso showed what at the time looked like a small man-made mound by a flattened hilltop. Snuck in to the Brockan field via a crumbly wall with old barbwire fence. Worked my way along to the end but no ingress. Back was a place with a gap twixt fence and fieldwall to step between. Barbwire fence attempt but electric uh-uh. So down across the field I went. Remains of a modern building and possible old farmtrack. And the obvious signs of a multiple watercourse to explain the name Brockan - it is another 'broken slope'. Over a gate and up along the fieldwall of the preferred route.
Up on top I could see that what I had seen previously was one site, a large flattened mound with the gap seen as a curving hollow carving its way across the width of it. There's supposed to be an earthfast stone in the exact centre but if it's only just protruding it is too well hidden. On the mound I can feel shallow depressions under my feet that must be part of the quarrying done out of it. Even if the 'passage' as we see it now is the result of more of said quarrying they obviously followed the path of least resistance and it is evidence for the underlying structure (chambered mound a contemporary update of Picts-house). Looking down to Skaill you can see the whole bay and most of the land below the surrounding hills and it is obvious that the Birsay Bay Project will be incomplete without a proper modern survey of the Knowe of Geoso. This side three drystane walls make a field junction, only made into a meeting of four by a 'standing stone fence' that starts atop the mound and heads towards a coastal waterfall. Alongside the mound on that side are several large stones which the NMRS describes as an arc of earthfast stones. Those I can see don't feel like any kind of arc but instead form discrete clumps, a triangle of stones of disparate form and material and two in a depression roughly triangular but disparate in size. Perhaps if I come back when the grass is lower more stones will convince me that an arc does exist.
Rather than going down to The Mount I followed the dyke at my left. Felt like another 'broken slope' with the evidence of several watercourses and stonework in various places. I would have spent more time investigating this lovely landscape. Somewhere near my route was a well (HY22781821) and later I found on the 1882 map Rowhall (HY22861809) and Westfield (HY22831815) used to be in this area. After continuing to a fence corner I turned to head over to Skara Brae with a tight squeeze to gain the coast. An intriguing lump over by a farm and just before I scrambled down to the beach the jumbled remains of a drystone building between path and cliff edge.It is only a month later I discover that in going along the cliffs I must have passed by the sites of the back of a prehistoric structure (ruined wall at HY22921877 with midden) and a cist (HY22941876 with prehistoric stonework still close by), then by a bend in the Garricott farmtrack facing the coast a settlement mound (HY22941874).
Back up to Snusgar in time to be part of the second batch of visitors. This year they had moved onto the other side of the Castle of Snusgar mound. Even fewer signs of structures than last year. But some beautiful stratigraphy thanks to the regular influx of sand even this far from the shore, delicate layers of light and dark. Near the present base of the mound there is a stone construction. Only it is likely to be a kelp-pit from operations that the excavations have shown took place on the site in fairly recent times. This side of the hillock there is a deep sand-filled ditch probably several feet deep, and if only they had the resources they are sure something much earlier would be revealed beneath it all. Much clearer results are coming from the new mound that they are starting on. For now they are referring to it as the east mound, though I think Snusgar East would be a more appropriate nomenclature. On the way there a bairn kept piping up to ask about burials and I considered mentioning the rock-cut tomb (HY21NW 35 at HY24221955) found in the edge of Sand Fiold opposite, somewhere in the sandy hill reveal visible from here. Finally on the new mound they have come up with a proper building and perhaps another stucture as well. Must be Viking or early mediaeval as the foundations are so regular and the details so clear even to the casual observer. Unlike last year here was something worth photographing by mere mortals. It is probably relevant to bring up the discovery (at HY23691962) of the the Skaill silver hoard from yet another sandy hill, this one between here and the Castle of Snusgar if I have located Snusgar East correctly.
With more time to fill before the bus back to Stromness I went down the road by the Loch of Skaill to get as close to the peedie islet as possible. At last I had some decent snaps. Not much to look at, and when doing some other research I found that it is a modern artifice laid down by one of the Grahams of Skaill. Or so the story goes. On the way back to the visitors centre popped off the road near the northern end of the loch to have a shufty at quarry. Nothing really to report. Had a look for the well shown close to it on the 1:25,000. Struck out there. Later I was going over the 1882 on Oldmaps and noticed that it did not show said well but did mark one on the opposite shore at exactly the same easting. Shurely shome mistake. Considered walking up to the Knowe of Geoso to take measurements but decided with the time left to have my packed lunch on one of the big circular picnic tables beside the car park road the other side of the stream instead.
ORPHIR FOLLOW UP August 1st 2005
Though the steatite cinerary urn (HY30NE 17) is described as having been found south of Highbreck before 1935 actually it came from left of the unused ground between Haybreck and the road, precise directions giving it at HY35750643 as shown by CANMAP itself (par for the course - the Broch of Lingro is in an area north of Lingro according to the O.S. in 1977 but actually lies eastward, being only fractionally further north in longtitude !). I always suspected there might be something about the bumps around here and now I knew that the glacial till from which it came is the mound cut through by road. Clued in I had made the connection finally. Nothing is said of how the urn was found, we can rule out road-widening and the 'modern' building of the cottage itself having had a hand. No trace of anything there now. About the same distance from the findspot as that is from the edge of Highbreck's rough ground is the site I had seen before, the earthwork with the chicken feeder. So that places it at HY35700640. To say that it could be at the end of a production of glacial till does not make it natural, it must have been very easy to dig into as evidenced by finds elsewhere about here. Could it relate to the (presumably Viking) urn ? For some reason the places and finds in Orphir seem pre-eminently. Or could it just be they have taken too fully the archaeologists' fancy, explaining the disdain for the Graystane maybe. Between that and the cist findspot at Nearhouse 'new house' lies a field centrally occupied by a building called Sweanabow 'the Bu of Sweyn', which seems strange as there is Swanbister below. But here nothing of note is apparent and the disparity between IIRC
'farm' and 'farm-settlement' remains.
Next stop that mysterious cuboid by the 'cottage' connected to Nealand. My hopes were high because the vegetation was virtually dry. I wanted to take measuerments, check for possible pipes, take a close look to uncover the function. But when I crossed over the dyke high nettles denied me access - I am not even sure that they were there last time, now that a summer of sorts had finally arrived things were shooting up week by week like something out of a John Wyndham story. At least there were no nettles in the space between the 'tank' and the building. No sign of anything going between them or any pipes. Which for the moment leaves me with an object looking in the region of a metre or so long and under half that across, composed of finely coursed drystane walling topped by a thick flag. The stone is like an horizontal 'standing stone'. A bit more intriguing detail on this with a shallow rectangular cut in the middle of the side towards the building; this about a third of the stone's length, sides in a 4:3 ratio on the photo and roughly a couple of inches deep.
Down to the Bu of Orphir road. Lookiing out for a quarry somewhere on the right. Orkney's 'quarries' are as plentiful and confusing as the 'wells'. They're all over the county. What look like quarries can appear on the map as rock outcrops and vice versa, and sometimes what is on the ground isn't noted at all. Then there is the subtle difference between a place from which material is quarried and one that is only a quarry. So I look at quarries and such to make sure I miss nothing. Didn't see it anyway as far as I could tell. Nice stones along the roadway. What I thought to be possiblt on of my 'flatface-aligned standing stone pairs' wasn't as they were far too close and there was a third stone at right angles. Some setup. And the stone I had seen loose by the farm was undistinguished.
At the Earl's Bu went to the bit with the mill channel and looked for anything at the stream to no avail. Further towards the sea, by the churchyard, there is stonework along the banks for a few metres. Nothing to say it couldn't be pre-Viking of course, it definitely isn't a wall associated with the mill as I have seen many Orcadian examples and they are all perpendicular.
From the churchyard took the Breck coastal path - The Breck being another stretch of 'broken' hillside like Breckna. Along the path you come to a place where a length of drystane wall still stands tall and covered with much pale-green (iunless you know better ?) lichen. Of course I chose to walk the shore below the cliffs for as long as was possible. From this viewpoint you can see how precarious the wall sits by the very edge of the cliff. And from this side every stone is thoroughly decorated by the soft 'staghorns' of that 3D lichen. Take a photo or two. On the shore you can see the sea-blackened length of a stone wall. One hesitated to call it a field-wall at the bottom of those cliffs. You see many of them stretching out to sea in Orkney, made up mostly of slabs on edge, and they look so primaeval that you are never 100% sure whether or no they are natural. With this one you feel safer about the artificiality as several stones stand up tall and vertical within it. Take several more photos. Alongside you can make out a broad shallow depression going down to the sea. Is the edge by the wall natural or man-altered ? Either way you can certainly imagine this as a slipway, with boats tethered to those long stones. Then I reversed my steps to clamber up to the steps again.
Where the path goes landward one arrow points you to a bothy, going under a 'doorway' a lintel connecting two 'halves'. The way didn't appear to continue after it met the cliffside again. So back and up to the road. Made a mistake and went right where it ends in the houses. Hang a left and turn right at the sharp corner unless you wish to return to the Saga Centre. This way leads to the group of habitations at Gyre. Lush vegetation hid the waters either side bottom of the hill. There is a walk there through the plantation on the left but I wasn't sure if you were allowed - maybe another time. Being estranged from plentiful trees in Orkney it feels so good to walk up that hillside road arched over by them like a green way. Bliss. This way brings you up to the churchyard junction in Orphir village, sat down and had my pack lunch by the gardens there rather than on one of the picnic tables. Then walked back to Kirkwall.
Along the way I took up my binoculars to look at The Holm of Groundwater (named after site of a RC chapel on the hillside above) on the Loch of Kirbister. On this is an intriguing site (HY30NE 6 at HY37170814). I could see the oval island, now hidden totally in tall vegetation, along from the pier. Depite the lack of view I felt strongly reminded of the artificial islet on the Loch of Wasdale (supposed site of a chapel), only by report much reduced structures and ?without the causeway - it has occured to me lately that perhaps before the last few centuries, when antiquarians ascribed ancient non-rectangular structural mounds to brochs and their ilk by default, 'tradition' instead automatically thought them to be the site of chapels, which would explain the great amount of confusion about the nature of such sites.
More about the Holm. In 1870 Petrie went to it and traced a circular building and its entrance. This is an oval structure 8.5x6.5m of stones (some square) covered by turf that sits on the 1.7m high southern half of this 37x19m island. Around this are faint traces of an enclosure a short distance from water-level. In 1935 an edge-mounted slab could be seen on the western side.
Though the steatite cinerary urn (HY30NE 17) is described as having been found south of Highbreck before 1935 actually it came from left of the unused ground between Haybreck and the road, precise directions giving it at HY35750643 as shown by CANMAP itself (par for the course - the Broch of Lingro is in an area north of Lingro according to the O.S. in 1977 but actually lies eastward, being only fractionally further north in longtitude !). I always suspected there might be something about the bumps around here and now I knew that the glacial till from which it came is the mound cut through by road. Clued in I had made the connection finally. Nothing is said of how the urn was found, we can rule out road-widening and the 'modern' building of the cottage itself having had a hand. No trace of anything there now. About the same distance from the findspot as that is from the edge of Highbreck's rough ground is the site I had seen before, the earthwork with the chicken feeder. So that places it at HY35700640. To say that it could be at the end of a production of glacial till does not make it natural, it must have been very easy to dig into as evidenced by finds elsewhere about here. Could it relate to the (presumably Viking) urn ? For some reason the places and finds in Orphir seem pre-eminently. Or could it just be they have taken too fully the archaeologists' fancy, explaining the disdain for the Graystane maybe. Between that and the cist findspot at Nearhouse 'new house' lies a field centrally occupied by a building called Sweanabow 'the Bu of Sweyn', which seems strange as there is Swanbister below. But here nothing of note is apparent and the disparity between IIRC
'farm' and 'farm-settlement' remains.
Next stop that mysterious cuboid by the 'cottage' connected to Nealand. My hopes were high because the vegetation was virtually dry. I wanted to take measuerments, check for possible pipes, take a close look to uncover the function. But when I crossed over the dyke high nettles denied me access - I am not even sure that they were there last time, now that a summer of sorts had finally arrived things were shooting up week by week like something out of a John Wyndham story. At least there were no nettles in the space between the 'tank' and the building. No sign of anything going between them or any pipes. Which for the moment leaves me with an object looking in the region of a metre or so long and under half that across, composed of finely coursed drystane walling topped by a thick flag. The stone is like an horizontal 'standing stone'. A bit more intriguing detail on this with a shallow rectangular cut in the middle of the side towards the building; this about a third of the stone's length, sides in a 4:3 ratio on the photo and roughly a couple of inches deep.
Down to the Bu of Orphir road. Lookiing out for a quarry somewhere on the right. Orkney's 'quarries' are as plentiful and confusing as the 'wells'. They're all over the county. What look like quarries can appear on the map as rock outcrops and vice versa, and sometimes what is on the ground isn't noted at all. Then there is the subtle difference between a place from which material is quarried and one that is only a quarry. So I look at quarries and such to make sure I miss nothing. Didn't see it anyway as far as I could tell. Nice stones along the roadway. What I thought to be possiblt on of my 'flatface-aligned standing stone pairs' wasn't as they were far too close and there was a third stone at right angles. Some setup. And the stone I had seen loose by the farm was undistinguished.
At the Earl's Bu went to the bit with the mill channel and looked for anything at the stream to no avail. Further towards the sea, by the churchyard, there is stonework along the banks for a few metres. Nothing to say it couldn't be pre-Viking of course, it definitely isn't a wall associated with the mill as I have seen many Orcadian examples and they are all perpendicular.
From the churchyard took the Breck coastal path - The Breck being another stretch of 'broken' hillside like Breckna. Along the path you come to a place where a length of drystane wall still stands tall and covered with much pale-green (iunless you know better ?) lichen. Of course I chose to walk the shore below the cliffs for as long as was possible. From this viewpoint you can see how precarious the wall sits by the very edge of the cliff. And from this side every stone is thoroughly decorated by the soft 'staghorns' of that 3D lichen. Take a photo or two. On the shore you can see the sea-blackened length of a stone wall. One hesitated to call it a field-wall at the bottom of those cliffs. You see many of them stretching out to sea in Orkney, made up mostly of slabs on edge, and they look so primaeval that you are never 100% sure whether or no they are natural. With this one you feel safer about the artificiality as several stones stand up tall and vertical within it. Take several more photos. Alongside you can make out a broad shallow depression going down to the sea. Is the edge by the wall natural or man-altered ? Either way you can certainly imagine this as a slipway, with boats tethered to those long stones. Then I reversed my steps to clamber up to the steps again.
Where the path goes landward one arrow points you to a bothy, going under a 'doorway' a lintel connecting two 'halves'. The way didn't appear to continue after it met the cliffside again. So back and up to the road. Made a mistake and went right where it ends in the houses. Hang a left and turn right at the sharp corner unless you wish to return to the Saga Centre. This way leads to the group of habitations at Gyre. Lush vegetation hid the waters either side bottom of the hill. There is a walk there through the plantation on the left but I wasn't sure if you were allowed - maybe another time. Being estranged from plentiful trees in Orkney it feels so good to walk up that hillside road arched over by them like a green way. Bliss. This way brings you up to the churchyard junction in Orphir village, sat down and had my pack lunch by the gardens there rather than on one of the picnic tables. Then walked back to Kirkwall.
Along the way I took up my binoculars to look at The Holm of Groundwater (named after site of a RC chapel on the hillside above) on the Loch of Kirbister. On this is an intriguing site (HY30NE 6 at HY37170814). I could see the oval island, now hidden totally in tall vegetation, along from the pier. Depite the lack of view I felt strongly reminded of the artificial islet on the Loch of Wasdale (supposed site of a chapel), only by report much reduced structures and ?without the causeway - it has occured to me lately that perhaps before the last few centuries, when antiquarians ascribed ancient non-rectangular structural mounds to brochs and their ilk by default, 'tradition' instead automatically thought them to be the site of chapels, which would explain the great amount of confusion about the nature of such sites.
More about the Holm. In 1870 Petrie went to it and traced a circular building and its entrance. This is an oval structure 8.5x6.5m of stones (some square) covered by turf that sits on the 1.7m high southern half of this 37x19m island. Around this are faint traces of an enclosure a short distance from water-level. In 1935 an edge-mounted slab could be seen on the western side.
July 17th 2005 LONG RAMBLING ABOUT ORPHIR
Checked out the area of today's walk on CANMAP the night before to double check my memory. Steatite urn found on glacial till mound south of Highbreck. Cist found in a cleared bit of ground before Nearhouse at the junction of the main road and the Swanbister farm road. Another from Smoogro, axe hammer found in kitchen-midden there. "Beautiful well" below Bancquoy/Bane-quoy sounded very intriguing: stone-walled well 0.9m across (formerly with a perforated coverstone where flags do duty now) sits in a marshy depression with many stones and the ground disturbed on all bar the east, a little before 1880 they found arrowheads, stone hammers, stone and flint implements, a large amount of "diminutive clay pottery", animal bones; the stones and bones were all burnt and a fatty deposit went down 6'. Surely a sacred well screaming out for a dry season's perusal ? Halfway down the Burn of Lerquoy another cist. A couple of fields to the SSE a flint scatter was found that included an axe flake. By the south wall of the grounds of Swanbister House between the stream and the farm road are the remains of a burnt mound the latter cut through (nowt to be seen). About where the lettering for Swanbister area is on the 1:25,000 there was a cist and urn found. The only cist still present is a double cist found in 1972 at Gyre, according to Canmore still lying under a sheet of corrugated iron but I hadn't found it previously. Over at the Earl's Bu apart from remains of burnt mounds only Viking structures visible [ball of freestone & stone 'celt' found close to standing stone by churchyard, by Petrie], so I presumed owt else prehistoric overlain by that to the point of invisibility.
My walk was pegged on an OAT guided tour of the Viking stuff mid-afternoon, but it being Saturday I had to get an early morning bus in order to do my investigations elsewhere.
Got off at the Grimeston road junction and briefly considered going around the east side of the Loch of Kirbister to gaze on the probable artificial islet of the Holm of Groundwater and on up to the tumuli above that had produced several cists. But I knew how too much time can still turn into too little and so continued to Graystane. I took two gos to find it because I relied on sight instead of memorised directions. Took as good a close-up as I could of the area of fracture or unsuccesful cleaving. A little further along a burn passes downhill and at the field edge is bounded either bank by a pair of 'standing stones'. It is crossed by a bigger version of the primitive bridge that you find over ditches in Orkney, a flat platform of stone covered by turf. Just downstream is/was a spring and a well is a liile beyond that, all by the burn. Over the road is a gravel pit.
At the Swanbister junction I took the track on the opposite side of the road until it gave out to the grassy brae, then retraced my steps to take my second target the track that runs at an angle to the road and ends at the Newhouse junction. This makes an almost triangular tract of land 'twixt it and the road. The twin-rutted track is little used, though there are reinforcing stones underfoot in a few places. At one point early on you can see where a stream ran underneath it from the edge of a small nearby rise. The way to points of interest is a modern metal gate on the uphill side. I clambered over to look at the mounds on the hillside in case they were other than natural. You can see where there has been peat-cutting, regular excavations a foot or so deep. Just within the boundary of the first one you come to a piece of stone about a foot across, either the top of a boulder or of a larger stone, either way certainly firmly embedded in the peat and not part of any hidden rocky outcrop. Elsewhere there were a couple of flat (sub-) rectangular stones that may have been from something, definitely no drystane wall hereabouts. From here you have a wonderful view of all the lands this side of Ward Hill. Another mound further on and slightly higher beckoned me, but I would have to negotiate a barbwire-fence and so left it for now. Near the end of the track is the first habitation, Akesley or Aikislay according to which century's map you use, not shown on the 1:25,000 map but being within where a waterbound rectangle is shown (it has changed location a little since 1882, and used to have something more marked the other side of the road).
Just before you reach the end there is a quarry on the uphill side of the track. Reaching the junction you will see opposite several widely-spaced 'standing stones' forming part of the curving fence, most (if not all) neither modern nor of any great age. Coming back to the Orphir road I was deeply desirous of checking out on the uphill side an intriguing feature into which a chicken feeder had been placed. There is a regular scoop that resembles in size and shape the space left by the removal a small croft, say. But the 1882 map shows no habitations in that entire tract of land apart from Akesley, even Highbreck is modern. Then directly behind the back of this rectangular negative space (that is, next up in this seemingly unmapped mound) is another of less regular shape that has a high back up to the top. The boundary between certainly appears man-made and on the RH side at the upper level seems to be a short exposed length of crude walling. Moving along and looking back you can see that this is merely the roadside end of what appears to be a large circular bank, possibly a quadrant of something. Forgot to take notes of where exactly these things were.
Now back to the Swanbister junction. As you turn down at your left is the cleared bit a cist came from. There are a few 'standing stones' on the field edges but the outstanding ones are a pair on the left down at field level, from an opening redundant since the farm road was built up across the face of it. The uphill stone is way too big for a gatepost, its size overpoering the other one, and is packed well. Often there is the impression that where you have a pair of 'standing stones' one far precedes the other in date, only subsequently being doubled up for the later usage. Where the track turns their is a field about the angle on the seaward side. It is from near an edge of the field next along that the scatter of flint flakes came, possibly indicative of settlement. Going along the next length of track looking uphill beyond Swanbister farm and the other dwellings is roughly where a cist with urn was found.
The attribution of the Hillock of Breakna to a Sveinn seems in further doubt in that Marwick refers several similar names to Swanbister to 'swine' and the Sands of Piggar are below here ! When the farm track turns again to go past the grounds of Swanbister House the trees either side give me the sense of a green lane which it obviously isn't (the same effect at Gyre is over a slightly longer distance and through it the track dips down and rises, a sure cure for anyone such as myself missing a real wood landscape in Orkney). Where the copse ends on the right between the track and the stream a triangle of land is all that survives of a burnt mound after the modern farm road was raised - there isn't so much as a hint of rise even at less luxuriant times of year, so completists only.
Now you can see the broch's hillock down on the left, alas in summer all you see is high grass and nettles. The short un-named burn (?a continuation of the Burn of Swanbister that comes down from Rams Dale above Orphir 'village'), passes under the track and on the left where the stream takes a final turn to flow alongside the Hillock of Breakna is a short length of wall in the further streambank. Once in the field you see that this wall starts at a natural ford that may well be the site's raison-d'etre. My third target was a rocky outcrop forming the seaward corner of the natural hillock. And still can't make up my mind if man has altered it, was much more convinced up close from inside the field. To the right of the burn are an imposing set of conical 'gateposts', well constructed of stone, that must have been where they went down with their boats. About where the stream comes to the shore is a very large thin slice of rock crossing it, damn shame it has to be natural ! There is groundcover of some teeny-tiny flowered plant.
On my last visit I had been most impressed by the Sands of Piggar that cover this side of Swanbister Bay and was surprised they weren't as popular as Waulkmill Bay. But now I knew why a local that had been gained the (for Orkney) extensive sandy beach by boat. The rocky foreshore where it isn't plain slippy is covered by equally slippery seaweed, eventually I was forced to retrace my steps. I had hoped to take a picture of the broch from the bay, after dodging between the many shallow pools of low tide I still could not see it. Even with a tall tower the hillock doesn't strike me as designed for visibility from the sea. And it seemed ably defended by nature as I have mentioned. To back this up I would point out that to the east of the hillock is a broad declivity that would allow an enemy to bypass it, There is now a good stone wall with another of those impressive 'gateways'. From the sands I would sat that if any place needed defending it would be flat Toy Ness where there is a pier still in use.
Back up on the track I saw that the field against the final bit of it had been cut since my previous visit, and so decided to look for any evidence of the chapel that stood there. Not even sure I saw the slightest rise though. Strange to say I did see a water-tank sized object alongside the track though outside the field-fence. Very plain cuboid. The interior was growing grass. Moved the grass away from the sides but saw no distinguishing marks. Would surely have been seen in the last official look for traces, so surely modern ?
On my way back up to the Orphir road there came a patch of drizzle, presumably the light occasional rain a few hours later than predicted. Into the 'village' and the old but not ancient church which marks the junction whera a road goes down to Gyre and down the hill to the Bu of Orphir and the Viking sites there. This treat I reserved for later. Past the edge of the 'village' there are the grounds of Cairnton. The name is transparently 'tunship of the cairn'. But though nothing is shown on the maps or on CANMAP there are patently at least one or two obvious ones. In the W of the wall about the place there is a small stone hut, like maybe a gardener's shed. You wonder, though, which came first - the back of the hut is so at one with the wall's outer face. Sometimes small features are the earlier but I can be fairly sure here that this hut post-dates the house. Between here and Rams Dale is the curiously named Russamyre 'horse-bog/marsh', that leads the mind to conjure up a vision of antient finds. Next junction up is where one short leg carries on up over Scorradale and another winds leisurely around Houton way. Briefly considered going up the track to Linnadale for the ford shown on the map. Unfortunately it looks as if my way there could end in recent buildings and I preferred to leave potential disappointment for another day and press on to Houton.
Now the rain was back and getting kind of heavy. At one place alongside the road on the uphill side there is the triangle of an ?enclosed orchard/garden. Certainly all those bushes and flowers pique the botanist in me, but I can see no point of entry. I mention it here because opposite is a farmtrack that looks to go to a mound behind the Bu of Orphir. So I went on down through the lush damp grass that tested my dense trousers. Didn't make it all the way down, just far enough. Coming back up I take a closer look at a small building (HY33000485) over the other side of the ditch that runs beside the track. This I do because of a strange object alongside the size and shape of a large water-tank, which I presume it to be. The sides are fine drystane walling, if a little rough. And then as a cover an irregular piece of flag like a thick standing stone, lending it the appearance of being capped by lead dropping down the sides. Looking at larger scale maps online I see a short length of track running diagonally from the corner of a house called Ne(a)land to this place. By the time I reached magnificent Grindally House, where the other end of the Bu road is, I was thoroughly soaked - so much for the showers being occasional and light ! So after a minute or two I regretfully abandoned my visit to Houton (there is no known old archaeology there, hou/how is 'headland' and the next notable NMRS is the rubble of the 'castle' of the Hillock of Hoorse-Ha way over in Clestrain).
Under the weather as I was it was impossible to resist the lure of the 'standing stones' at various spots beside the Bu road. At one point between Gridally and the Earl's Bu I think I found one of my 'flat-face aligned standing stone pairs' that I believe mark the crossover between boundaries. So here I am looking for stones on either side when just before the farm and in the space by it I see a 'standing stone' slumped over a piece of rusty machinery. And the thought passes through my mind is this the missing Petrie standing stone uprooted from all those pre-IA goodies. Or maybe it is still present - the converse of a standing stone losing all interest (to an official archaeologist leastways) if it has lost its context is that if you find something by or under a stone it is automatically read as a standing stone (the evidence adjudged necessary for the standing stone identity often seems in inverse proportion to the number of stones in a region).
Thank goodness the saga centre is open all day. Looked at the boards, watched the video. Long time till the talk, a few hardy souls. The main part of the Earl's Bu is now under the turf in front of the churchyard wall. What you can see to the left of the path is the auxiliary buildings's foundations mostly, very Romantic. Anne Brundle said that the concentric features found by survey (http://www.sair.org.uk/sair4/sair4.pdf ; EB91 Bu Lawn/ West Field resistivity) that I had believed to roughly resemble the Hillhead Enclosure could well be a broch, though I hae my doots (not under Round Church either, would have come up on churchyard survey like 'modern' church foundations did. Only overheard this whilst I was busy snapping the buildings whilst the tour was by the church, expecting the talk to be of Vikings only. Then, as an afterthought, the tour went on to the site of the horizontal mill. This is the buildings and greenspace down to the burn (the burn having water even in times of severe drought is the reason for this area's continuing popularity). What you can still see are the outfall opening and tailrace and the soakaway. It was a relief to finally have a function description to go with photos taken some time back - the report had made me think the mill lay on the other side of the road, I am a bear of small brain. So this slab-lined channel and the mill wall show where one of the burnt mounds lies.
Anne had also mentioned the double cist up the hill at Gyre; I overheard something about a ? laughing skull (probably one of her witticisms). So I mentioned the NMRS saying it still existed under a corrugated iron sheet. She checked with another of our party, Halcro-Johnstone who owns Orphir House at Gyre. Apparently the sheet went and the cist, never having been very solid when found ("thank goodness we've got the photos"), is now even further decayed. Naturally despite having been excavated in 1972 the findings still haven't been 'published' - the monuments records for 20th century are often a mere palimpsest or a foreshadowing of what still lies far ahead. Which is why the likes of TMA and the Portal are mankind's best hope ;-)
Checked out the area of today's walk on CANMAP the night before to double check my memory. Steatite urn found on glacial till mound south of Highbreck. Cist found in a cleared bit of ground before Nearhouse at the junction of the main road and the Swanbister farm road. Another from Smoogro, axe hammer found in kitchen-midden there. "Beautiful well" below Bancquoy/Bane-quoy sounded very intriguing: stone-walled well 0.9m across (formerly with a perforated coverstone where flags do duty now) sits in a marshy depression with many stones and the ground disturbed on all bar the east, a little before 1880 they found arrowheads, stone hammers, stone and flint implements, a large amount of "diminutive clay pottery", animal bones; the stones and bones were all burnt and a fatty deposit went down 6'. Surely a sacred well screaming out for a dry season's perusal ? Halfway down the Burn of Lerquoy another cist. A couple of fields to the SSE a flint scatter was found that included an axe flake. By the south wall of the grounds of Swanbister House between the stream and the farm road are the remains of a burnt mound the latter cut through (nowt to be seen). About where the lettering for Swanbister area is on the 1:25,000 there was a cist and urn found. The only cist still present is a double cist found in 1972 at Gyre, according to Canmore still lying under a sheet of corrugated iron but I hadn't found it previously. Over at the Earl's Bu apart from remains of burnt mounds only Viking structures visible [ball of freestone & stone 'celt' found close to standing stone by churchyard, by Petrie], so I presumed owt else prehistoric overlain by that to the point of invisibility.
My walk was pegged on an OAT guided tour of the Viking stuff mid-afternoon, but it being Saturday I had to get an early morning bus in order to do my investigations elsewhere.
Got off at the Grimeston road junction and briefly considered going around the east side of the Loch of Kirbister to gaze on the probable artificial islet of the Holm of Groundwater and on up to the tumuli above that had produced several cists. But I knew how too much time can still turn into too little and so continued to Graystane. I took two gos to find it because I relied on sight instead of memorised directions. Took as good a close-up as I could of the area of fracture or unsuccesful cleaving. A little further along a burn passes downhill and at the field edge is bounded either bank by a pair of 'standing stones'. It is crossed by a bigger version of the primitive bridge that you find over ditches in Orkney, a flat platform of stone covered by turf. Just downstream is/was a spring and a well is a liile beyond that, all by the burn. Over the road is a gravel pit.
At the Swanbister junction I took the track on the opposite side of the road until it gave out to the grassy brae, then retraced my steps to take my second target the track that runs at an angle to the road and ends at the Newhouse junction. This makes an almost triangular tract of land 'twixt it and the road. The twin-rutted track is little used, though there are reinforcing stones underfoot in a few places. At one point early on you can see where a stream ran underneath it from the edge of a small nearby rise. The way to points of interest is a modern metal gate on the uphill side. I clambered over to look at the mounds on the hillside in case they were other than natural. You can see where there has been peat-cutting, regular excavations a foot or so deep. Just within the boundary of the first one you come to a piece of stone about a foot across, either the top of a boulder or of a larger stone, either way certainly firmly embedded in the peat and not part of any hidden rocky outcrop. Elsewhere there were a couple of flat (sub-) rectangular stones that may have been from something, definitely no drystane wall hereabouts. From here you have a wonderful view of all the lands this side of Ward Hill. Another mound further on and slightly higher beckoned me, but I would have to negotiate a barbwire-fence and so left it for now. Near the end of the track is the first habitation, Akesley or Aikislay according to which century's map you use, not shown on the 1:25,000 map but being within where a waterbound rectangle is shown (it has changed location a little since 1882, and used to have something more marked the other side of the road).
Just before you reach the end there is a quarry on the uphill side of the track. Reaching the junction you will see opposite several widely-spaced 'standing stones' forming part of the curving fence, most (if not all) neither modern nor of any great age. Coming back to the Orphir road I was deeply desirous of checking out on the uphill side an intriguing feature into which a chicken feeder had been placed. There is a regular scoop that resembles in size and shape the space left by the removal a small croft, say. But the 1882 map shows no habitations in that entire tract of land apart from Akesley, even Highbreck is modern. Then directly behind the back of this rectangular negative space (that is, next up in this seemingly unmapped mound) is another of less regular shape that has a high back up to the top. The boundary between certainly appears man-made and on the RH side at the upper level seems to be a short exposed length of crude walling. Moving along and looking back you can see that this is merely the roadside end of what appears to be a large circular bank, possibly a quadrant of something. Forgot to take notes of where exactly these things were.
Now back to the Swanbister junction. As you turn down at your left is the cleared bit a cist came from. There are a few 'standing stones' on the field edges but the outstanding ones are a pair on the left down at field level, from an opening redundant since the farm road was built up across the face of it. The uphill stone is way too big for a gatepost, its size overpoering the other one, and is packed well. Often there is the impression that where you have a pair of 'standing stones' one far precedes the other in date, only subsequently being doubled up for the later usage. Where the track turns their is a field about the angle on the seaward side. It is from near an edge of the field next along that the scatter of flint flakes came, possibly indicative of settlement. Going along the next length of track looking uphill beyond Swanbister farm and the other dwellings is roughly where a cist with urn was found.
The attribution of the Hillock of Breakna to a Sveinn seems in further doubt in that Marwick refers several similar names to Swanbister to 'swine' and the Sands of Piggar are below here ! When the farm track turns again to go past the grounds of Swanbister House the trees either side give me the sense of a green lane which it obviously isn't (the same effect at Gyre is over a slightly longer distance and through it the track dips down and rises, a sure cure for anyone such as myself missing a real wood landscape in Orkney). Where the copse ends on the right between the track and the stream a triangle of land is all that survives of a burnt mound after the modern farm road was raised - there isn't so much as a hint of rise even at less luxuriant times of year, so completists only.
Now you can see the broch's hillock down on the left, alas in summer all you see is high grass and nettles. The short un-named burn (?a continuation of the Burn of Swanbister that comes down from Rams Dale above Orphir 'village'), passes under the track and on the left where the stream takes a final turn to flow alongside the Hillock of Breakna is a short length of wall in the further streambank. Once in the field you see that this wall starts at a natural ford that may well be the site's raison-d'etre. My third target was a rocky outcrop forming the seaward corner of the natural hillock. And still can't make up my mind if man has altered it, was much more convinced up close from inside the field. To the right of the burn are an imposing set of conical 'gateposts', well constructed of stone, that must have been where they went down with their boats. About where the stream comes to the shore is a very large thin slice of rock crossing it, damn shame it has to be natural ! There is groundcover of some teeny-tiny flowered plant.
On my last visit I had been most impressed by the Sands of Piggar that cover this side of Swanbister Bay and was surprised they weren't as popular as Waulkmill Bay. But now I knew why a local that had been gained the (for Orkney) extensive sandy beach by boat. The rocky foreshore where it isn't plain slippy is covered by equally slippery seaweed, eventually I was forced to retrace my steps. I had hoped to take a picture of the broch from the bay, after dodging between the many shallow pools of low tide I still could not see it. Even with a tall tower the hillock doesn't strike me as designed for visibility from the sea. And it seemed ably defended by nature as I have mentioned. To back this up I would point out that to the east of the hillock is a broad declivity that would allow an enemy to bypass it, There is now a good stone wall with another of those impressive 'gateways'. From the sands I would sat that if any place needed defending it would be flat Toy Ness where there is a pier still in use.
Back up on the track I saw that the field against the final bit of it had been cut since my previous visit, and so decided to look for any evidence of the chapel that stood there. Not even sure I saw the slightest rise though. Strange to say I did see a water-tank sized object alongside the track though outside the field-fence. Very plain cuboid. The interior was growing grass. Moved the grass away from the sides but saw no distinguishing marks. Would surely have been seen in the last official look for traces, so surely modern ?
On my way back up to the Orphir road there came a patch of drizzle, presumably the light occasional rain a few hours later than predicted. Into the 'village' and the old but not ancient church which marks the junction whera a road goes down to Gyre and down the hill to the Bu of Orphir and the Viking sites there. This treat I reserved for later. Past the edge of the 'village' there are the grounds of Cairnton. The name is transparently 'tunship of the cairn'. But though nothing is shown on the maps or on CANMAP there are patently at least one or two obvious ones. In the W of the wall about the place there is a small stone hut, like maybe a gardener's shed. You wonder, though, which came first - the back of the hut is so at one with the wall's outer face. Sometimes small features are the earlier but I can be fairly sure here that this hut post-dates the house. Between here and Rams Dale is the curiously named Russamyre 'horse-bog/marsh', that leads the mind to conjure up a vision of antient finds. Next junction up is where one short leg carries on up over Scorradale and another winds leisurely around Houton way. Briefly considered going up the track to Linnadale for the ford shown on the map. Unfortunately it looks as if my way there could end in recent buildings and I preferred to leave potential disappointment for another day and press on to Houton.
Now the rain was back and getting kind of heavy. At one place alongside the road on the uphill side there is the triangle of an ?enclosed orchard/garden. Certainly all those bushes and flowers pique the botanist in me, but I can see no point of entry. I mention it here because opposite is a farmtrack that looks to go to a mound behind the Bu of Orphir. So I went on down through the lush damp grass that tested my dense trousers. Didn't make it all the way down, just far enough. Coming back up I take a closer look at a small building (HY33000485) over the other side of the ditch that runs beside the track. This I do because of a strange object alongside the size and shape of a large water-tank, which I presume it to be. The sides are fine drystane walling, if a little rough. And then as a cover an irregular piece of flag like a thick standing stone, lending it the appearance of being capped by lead dropping down the sides. Looking at larger scale maps online I see a short length of track running diagonally from the corner of a house called Ne(a)land to this place. By the time I reached magnificent Grindally House, where the other end of the Bu road is, I was thoroughly soaked - so much for the showers being occasional and light ! So after a minute or two I regretfully abandoned my visit to Houton (there is no known old archaeology there, hou/how is 'headland' and the next notable NMRS is the rubble of the 'castle' of the Hillock of Hoorse-Ha way over in Clestrain).
Under the weather as I was it was impossible to resist the lure of the 'standing stones' at various spots beside the Bu road. At one point between Gridally and the Earl's Bu I think I found one of my 'flat-face aligned standing stone pairs' that I believe mark the crossover between boundaries. So here I am looking for stones on either side when just before the farm and in the space by it I see a 'standing stone' slumped over a piece of rusty machinery. And the thought passes through my mind is this the missing Petrie standing stone uprooted from all those pre-IA goodies. Or maybe it is still present - the converse of a standing stone losing all interest (to an official archaeologist leastways) if it has lost its context is that if you find something by or under a stone it is automatically read as a standing stone (the evidence adjudged necessary for the standing stone identity often seems in inverse proportion to the number of stones in a region).
Thank goodness the saga centre is open all day. Looked at the boards, watched the video. Long time till the talk, a few hardy souls. The main part of the Earl's Bu is now under the turf in front of the churchyard wall. What you can see to the left of the path is the auxiliary buildings's foundations mostly, very Romantic. Anne Brundle said that the concentric features found by survey (http://www.sair.org.uk/sair4/sair4.pdf ; EB91 Bu Lawn/ West Field resistivity) that I had believed to roughly resemble the Hillhead Enclosure could well be a broch, though I hae my doots (not under Round Church either, would have come up on churchyard survey like 'modern' church foundations did. Only overheard this whilst I was busy snapping the buildings whilst the tour was by the church, expecting the talk to be of Vikings only. Then, as an afterthought, the tour went on to the site of the horizontal mill. This is the buildings and greenspace down to the burn (the burn having water even in times of severe drought is the reason for this area's continuing popularity). What you can still see are the outfall opening and tailrace and the soakaway. It was a relief to finally have a function description to go with photos taken some time back - the report had made me think the mill lay on the other side of the road, I am a bear of small brain. So this slab-lined channel and the mill wall show where one of the burnt mounds lies.
Anne had also mentioned the double cist up the hill at Gyre; I overheard something about a ? laughing skull (probably one of her witticisms). So I mentioned the NMRS saying it still existed under a corrugated iron sheet. She checked with another of our party, Halcro-Johnstone who owns Orphir House at Gyre. Apparently the sheet went and the cist, never having been very solid when found ("thank goodness we've got the photos"), is now even further decayed. Naturally despite having been excavated in 1972 the findings still haven't been 'published' - the monuments records for 20th century are often a mere palimpsest or a foreshadowing of what still lies far ahead. Which is why the likes of TMA and the Portal are mankind's best hope ;-)
HOWE TO KNOWE July 10th 2005
This year's open day at the Knowes of Trotty I would be a little early because of the bus timetable. Only Kirkwall-Stromness on a Sunday so set off from the Dounby junction and up to the first crossroads, the one before Appiehouse Take the RH off. Coming to the side road that goes up by Howe (built on a natural hillock) and Manse when I had a thought about the Fa'an Stane 0'Howe. This large stone on the Howe lands was broken up and removed sometime before 1882 (for I don't see the O.S. missing a named stone). It is said to be a standing stone of which there is no trace. Only it struck me as it was already fallen when named maybe they should be looking for an artificial mound, perhaps like the Stanerandy Tumulus having been called the Stanerandy Stones till (IIRC) modern times. There were and are tumuli over by Winksetter, I rather imagine we can ignore the Knowes of Trotty. Or maybe a natural hillock would do, like with the Appiehouse Stone. Further along the road lie a disused pit and a quarry - perhaps it got in the way of workings. Wish I knew what precise area the Howe farm lands covered on the 1882 map.
Saw a mown track before the route used last time and presumed it to be a newer better way to the Knowes of Trotty. In this I was wrong. Continued across fields anyway. Very tough going but did get to see a nice bridge out there and became intrigued by a flattened area of burn that I guess was the ford marked on the 1:25,000 in a now isolated spot on the track to the tumuli. Getting to the track my trousers were soaked all the way up from the vegetation, strangely I didn't become thoroughly drenched until the knee-high grass where the farmtrack underfoot becomes a not-quite footpath. Not had squelchy feet for ages, must have been sock osmosis ! So know not to come hither when rain is about. But oh, all about the bright dainty butterflies seeking mates and the siren calls of parenting birds.
When I reached the place of excavation, about the middle of the day, I found out that I forgot the open day started not till two. There was no-one about, only a notice for when the tour began. Thought I to cross the field and while away the time perusing sites about Dounby - for one I have never yet gone down the Howe side road to seek out the broch and well of Nettletar that lie on the Burn of Nettleton below Manse. Unfortunately identical notices bounded the field on all sides, blocking my way [once the season's dig was done the public were informed that besides the scattered amber beads had they discovered three gold fragments, one being about an inch long even still rolled up]. So I wended my way back fully along the proper track and pitied those to come later whom I could not warn of conditions (no notice at the track's start !).
So it was that my feet found there way to the farm road that skirts the Loch of Wasdale before heading for Berstane, cars going only as far as Wasdale Farm. There are a few 'standing stones' on the way to the northern end of the lochan. Before you reach the waters a tine goes to Setter, and in the angle sit a set of picturesque ruins above road level that NMRS calls a farmstead, though using a query in so doing. Just above Setter Farm are shown mounds, and in the far end of a field to its left a burnt mound. I saw the waters of the lochan lower than on any of my previous visits - there were several areas of ground just about breaking the surface and I am able to see the tops of at least one side of the short causeway to the artificial islet (though later I see a poor photograph in an hardbacked thesis shewing its entirety laid bare, a drought year). Mostly what you are aware of is the 'modern' cairn atop this creation. Like the Holm of Groundwater on the Loch of Kirbister in Orphir used to there are the traces of a wall round it at the (winter) water-level. Here, though, there is a causeway from the southern tip behind which are the remains of a massive stone rampart. Of the suspects it does sound more like a dun than a broch or any kind of roundhouse.
Along the grassy track to Berstane and the Howe-Harper cairn still looked impregnable in an unenterable field. The map shows tumuli a little further around the hillside. On the farm road above Berstane Farm I looked back at the cairn and noticed a second area of exposed soil on the opposite end to the first. Only when I looked at the digital photo back home did I notice a gate in the fence alongside the field. Must be up at the level of Berstane House or I'd certainly have noticed it before - ah well, there's always next time. From this point I looked across the the pass and the Kirkwall-Stromness road to the Hill of Heddle and for the first time really noticed the mounds on the slopes. The 1:25,000 confirms these as tumuli. I am struck by their resemblance to the hillside above New Scapa Road and finally convinced that the mounds there too are man-made. Back down to the main road the wood on the right is a plantation and a cairn is shown on the hillside above its east end. More evident is the Snaba Hill Cairn up around the hill again.
Last visit of the day is the Cuween Hill Cairn. Fairy Knowe indeed. Orkney has no faery, it has Finns and huldu-folk, dwarfies and hogboons. Finally I added the cell that lies to the right of the entrance, an easy one to overlook by the fact of being on the same side. Climbed on top, or rather up around the back. Here can be seen a circular back to the mound. Not sure whether this is original or a post-excavation artefact. Does feel somewhat like a platform, and a similar feature has been said to be part of the Howe-Harper Cairn.
This year's open day at the Knowes of Trotty I would be a little early because of the bus timetable. Only Kirkwall-Stromness on a Sunday so set off from the Dounby junction and up to the first crossroads, the one before Appiehouse Take the RH off. Coming to the side road that goes up by Howe (built on a natural hillock) and Manse when I had a thought about the Fa'an Stane 0'Howe. This large stone on the Howe lands was broken up and removed sometime before 1882 (for I don't see the O.S. missing a named stone). It is said to be a standing stone of which there is no trace. Only it struck me as it was already fallen when named maybe they should be looking for an artificial mound, perhaps like the Stanerandy Tumulus having been called the Stanerandy Stones till (IIRC) modern times. There were and are tumuli over by Winksetter, I rather imagine we can ignore the Knowes of Trotty. Or maybe a natural hillock would do, like with the Appiehouse Stone. Further along the road lie a disused pit and a quarry - perhaps it got in the way of workings. Wish I knew what precise area the Howe farm lands covered on the 1882 map.
Saw a mown track before the route used last time and presumed it to be a newer better way to the Knowes of Trotty. In this I was wrong. Continued across fields anyway. Very tough going but did get to see a nice bridge out there and became intrigued by a flattened area of burn that I guess was the ford marked on the 1:25,000 in a now isolated spot on the track to the tumuli. Getting to the track my trousers were soaked all the way up from the vegetation, strangely I didn't become thoroughly drenched until the knee-high grass where the farmtrack underfoot becomes a not-quite footpath. Not had squelchy feet for ages, must have been sock osmosis ! So know not to come hither when rain is about. But oh, all about the bright dainty butterflies seeking mates and the siren calls of parenting birds.
When I reached the place of excavation, about the middle of the day, I found out that I forgot the open day started not till two. There was no-one about, only a notice for when the tour began. Thought I to cross the field and while away the time perusing sites about Dounby - for one I have never yet gone down the Howe side road to seek out the broch and well of Nettletar that lie on the Burn of Nettleton below Manse. Unfortunately identical notices bounded the field on all sides, blocking my way [once the season's dig was done the public were informed that besides the scattered amber beads had they discovered three gold fragments, one being about an inch long even still rolled up]. So I wended my way back fully along the proper track and pitied those to come later whom I could not warn of conditions (no notice at the track's start !).
So it was that my feet found there way to the farm road that skirts the Loch of Wasdale before heading for Berstane, cars going only as far as Wasdale Farm. There are a few 'standing stones' on the way to the northern end of the lochan. Before you reach the waters a tine goes to Setter, and in the angle sit a set of picturesque ruins above road level that NMRS calls a farmstead, though using a query in so doing. Just above Setter Farm are shown mounds, and in the far end of a field to its left a burnt mound. I saw the waters of the lochan lower than on any of my previous visits - there were several areas of ground just about breaking the surface and I am able to see the tops of at least one side of the short causeway to the artificial islet (though later I see a poor photograph in an hardbacked thesis shewing its entirety laid bare, a drought year). Mostly what you are aware of is the 'modern' cairn atop this creation. Like the Holm of Groundwater on the Loch of Kirbister in Orphir used to there are the traces of a wall round it at the (winter) water-level. Here, though, there is a causeway from the southern tip behind which are the remains of a massive stone rampart. Of the suspects it does sound more like a dun than a broch or any kind of roundhouse.
Along the grassy track to Berstane and the Howe-Harper cairn still looked impregnable in an unenterable field. The map shows tumuli a little further around the hillside. On the farm road above Berstane Farm I looked back at the cairn and noticed a second area of exposed soil on the opposite end to the first. Only when I looked at the digital photo back home did I notice a gate in the fence alongside the field. Must be up at the level of Berstane House or I'd certainly have noticed it before - ah well, there's always next time. From this point I looked across the the pass and the Kirkwall-Stromness road to the Hill of Heddle and for the first time really noticed the mounds on the slopes. The 1:25,000 confirms these as tumuli. I am struck by their resemblance to the hillside above New Scapa Road and finally convinced that the mounds there too are man-made. Back down to the main road the wood on the right is a plantation and a cairn is shown on the hillside above its east end. More evident is the Snaba Hill Cairn up around the hill again.
Last visit of the day is the Cuween Hill Cairn. Fairy Knowe indeed. Orkney has no faery, it has Finns and huldu-folk, dwarfies and hogboons. Finally I added the cell that lies to the right of the entrance, an easy one to overlook by the fact of being on the same side. Climbed on top, or rather up around the back. Here can be seen a circular back to the mound. Not sure whether this is original or a post-excavation artefact. Does feel somewhat like a platform, and a similar feature has been said to be part of the Howe-Harper Cairn.
June 1st 2005 OLD FINSTOWN ROAD
Took the bus to Finstown, got off by the graveyard. Considered trying for the Snaba Hill cairn, even had that part of a large-scale map with me. It occupies the kind of hillside location where you can identify sites on the map from a distance but once you reach the hill itself you become lost, the landscape overpowers your senses through the added third dimension. Conserve my energies, leave it for a day in winter or spring when I am less liable to be disappointed by covering vegetation. Places like Cuween Hill that are in care are a wonder year-round by contrast. Up onto the Old Finstown Road past the burn side mounds and up the track to the chambered cairn once more.
The lantern at Cuween Hill is next to useless, the pinprick of light and its umbra good for picking out points but next to useless here, really need one of those dome lanterns to see much of anything (especially if you wish to take photos, for which it is necessary to know what is in the frame before the flash goes !). And my 1 lux videocamera proved useless too, once inside. Decided to take pics of the ceilings as I figured not many people would have done this. Simple technique, lay the digital camera on its back roughly central and press go. This works well here. (But when I tried it at Wideford Hill's chambers this Sunday I only got half of un in, so credit to whoever shot the 'beehive' chamber there). Bit of a hands and knees job but reasonably dry. Only one I put myself entirely inside for a good look was the double at the back, all the rest I basically laid out flat with arms in front to place the camera. If there had been more light and if I hadn't been alone ... The double was split by two thin slabs across the width, the chamber on the right has a thin slab acoss the end of the the entrance flag marking the chamber itself. You certainly have the feeling that all the cells are by different hands, finally unified by the covering mound. Apart from that at the left (which you can practically walk into therefore) all the chambers' entrances are raised above the floor of the main chamber, though at differing heights. A lost rough sandstone ball came from the s'ern half of the doublet. On this occasion I missed the chamber to the left of the main entrance (It actually showed in a photo, but being uncertain of the batteries I looked at none whilst there). I was looking for four spaces and found four, not thinking one main chamber plus four cells leading off !
Looking along the entrance to the outside it is possible to see Wideford Hill in the distance like the say. But on the diagonal - was this an accident, explaining the slight curve of the passage, or deliberate like the sightlines that 'pass' across the outside of a mound for instance. And rather than looking across to the other chambered cairn did it look down onto the various settlements (Crossiecrown at Quanter Ness and/or the Ramberry Cairn may have been visible too). Up on Wideford Hill and looking down across the burn could those bumps be indications of a more extensive settlement than just the excavated Wideford Meadow ? The latter resulted from finds of flints but the earlier report of of a flint findspot along the burn relates to an area of gorse not far from the main Kirkwall-Finstown road (by the road end of the burn the 1882 map shows a stone, perhaps a boundary marker, gone now).
Back down to earth and along the road you come to a bend opposite the the Old Manse of Firth where it cuts across the end of a large mound on its right which is hemmed in by two tracks additionally. This is the Cot of Cursiter. Cot is taken to be 'common field', but as the only other such placename I know, Nevada Cott near Lingro and Work, is also dominated by a sizable mound also, I beg to differ. I take it to be a Celtic loan-word here, with a meaning of something along the lines of 'palace' instead.
Before I reached the small stretch of road that 'bridges' the two main ones from Finstown I chanced to look across to Ingshowe Broch. From here at last it looked like a proper broch ruin outline, though don't remember if this was a naked-eye observation. Peachy. Didn't take the cut to there.
Past the junction there is a nice farm called Rossmyre. The burn t'other side o't' road may have the scant remains of something along the upper east bank, a few stones sticking out of the bare earth. Next good bit of masonry is at Bridgend. A burn again. The bridge on the cottage side looks down on the burn several metres below, reminiscent of that near Millhouse in Holm. But the real goody is on the other side. Here the burn runs alongside the road on its way east. Not running quite so deep, but still impressively deep for Orkney and lined with stone banks for the whole depth of it. Definitely for a mill - the craftsmanship is superb (and hid from almost everyone). All the prehistoric stuff still standing and yet where now is the associated mill for this. And where the celebration for what does survive at this place ?
Now back up a bit or you'll do the same as me. Between Rossmyre and Bridgend is Nabban. A little past here I had previously found something resembling a cist in the wide grass verge (HY391118). Went straight past before I thought on it. And despite being on foot and having been twice or thrice previously I still walked up and down two times before I found it again !! The water levels having dropped since the previous occasion the site looked more like a well now (a totally unmapped one in 1882 or now if so), with what at first glance looked like corbelling. The full depth being revealed as 0.9m (as far as I could find) what I had taken for the bottom were ledges on two sides. To the casual glance the ledges do indeed make you think of corbelling, however there's only one rough-edged ?slab on the left extending as a near triangular shape 0.25m along and 0.6m from the back left corner, with drystane walling above, and one on the right a slab 0.45m long and only 0.1m from the back right corner. Apart from the section of walling and the 'ledges' the structure is of slab construction (the slab at right back does feel like a standing stone re-used though). The base is hidden by a couple of short bits of wood and a thin layer of other rubbish. Almost feels like part of a souterrain, certainly something of at least that age.
Took the bus to Finstown, got off by the graveyard. Considered trying for the Snaba Hill cairn, even had that part of a large-scale map with me. It occupies the kind of hillside location where you can identify sites on the map from a distance but once you reach the hill itself you become lost, the landscape overpowers your senses through the added third dimension. Conserve my energies, leave it for a day in winter or spring when I am less liable to be disappointed by covering vegetation. Places like Cuween Hill that are in care are a wonder year-round by contrast. Up onto the Old Finstown Road past the burn side mounds and up the track to the chambered cairn once more.
The lantern at Cuween Hill is next to useless, the pinprick of light and its umbra good for picking out points but next to useless here, really need one of those dome lanterns to see much of anything (especially if you wish to take photos, for which it is necessary to know what is in the frame before the flash goes !). And my 1 lux videocamera proved useless too, once inside. Decided to take pics of the ceilings as I figured not many people would have done this. Simple technique, lay the digital camera on its back roughly central and press go. This works well here. (But when I tried it at Wideford Hill's chambers this Sunday I only got half of un in, so credit to whoever shot the 'beehive' chamber there). Bit of a hands and knees job but reasonably dry. Only one I put myself entirely inside for a good look was the double at the back, all the rest I basically laid out flat with arms in front to place the camera. If there had been more light and if I hadn't been alone ... The double was split by two thin slabs across the width, the chamber on the right has a thin slab acoss the end of the the entrance flag marking the chamber itself. You certainly have the feeling that all the cells are by different hands, finally unified by the covering mound. Apart from that at the left (which you can practically walk into therefore) all the chambers' entrances are raised above the floor of the main chamber, though at differing heights. A lost rough sandstone ball came from the s'ern half of the doublet. On this occasion I missed the chamber to the left of the main entrance (It actually showed in a photo, but being uncertain of the batteries I looked at none whilst there). I was looking for four spaces and found four, not thinking one main chamber plus four cells leading off !
Looking along the entrance to the outside it is possible to see Wideford Hill in the distance like the say. But on the diagonal - was this an accident, explaining the slight curve of the passage, or deliberate like the sightlines that 'pass' across the outside of a mound for instance. And rather than looking across to the other chambered cairn did it look down onto the various settlements (Crossiecrown at Quanter Ness and/or the Ramberry Cairn may have been visible too). Up on Wideford Hill and looking down across the burn could those bumps be indications of a more extensive settlement than just the excavated Wideford Meadow ? The latter resulted from finds of flints but the earlier report of of a flint findspot along the burn relates to an area of gorse not far from the main Kirkwall-Finstown road (by the road end of the burn the 1882 map shows a stone, perhaps a boundary marker, gone now).
Back down to earth and along the road you come to a bend opposite the the Old Manse of Firth where it cuts across the end of a large mound on its right which is hemmed in by two tracks additionally. This is the Cot of Cursiter. Cot is taken to be 'common field', but as the only other such placename I know, Nevada Cott near Lingro and Work, is also dominated by a sizable mound also, I beg to differ. I take it to be a Celtic loan-word here, with a meaning of something along the lines of 'palace' instead.
Before I reached the small stretch of road that 'bridges' the two main ones from Finstown I chanced to look across to Ingshowe Broch. From here at last it looked like a proper broch ruin outline, though don't remember if this was a naked-eye observation. Peachy. Didn't take the cut to there.
Past the junction there is a nice farm called Rossmyre. The burn t'other side o't' road may have the scant remains of something along the upper east bank, a few stones sticking out of the bare earth. Next good bit of masonry is at Bridgend. A burn again. The bridge on the cottage side looks down on the burn several metres below, reminiscent of that near Millhouse in Holm. But the real goody is on the other side. Here the burn runs alongside the road on its way east. Not running quite so deep, but still impressively deep for Orkney and lined with stone banks for the whole depth of it. Definitely for a mill - the craftsmanship is superb (and hid from almost everyone). All the prehistoric stuff still standing and yet where now is the associated mill for this. And where the celebration for what does survive at this place ?
Now back up a bit or you'll do the same as me. Between Rossmyre and Bridgend is Nabban. A little past here I had previously found something resembling a cist in the wide grass verge (HY391118). Went straight past before I thought on it. And despite being on foot and having been twice or thrice previously I still walked up and down two times before I found it again !! The water levels having dropped since the previous occasion the site looked more like a well now (a totally unmapped one in 1882 or now if so), with what at first glance looked like corbelling. The full depth being revealed as 0.9m (as far as I could find) what I had taken for the bottom were ledges on two sides. To the casual glance the ledges do indeed make you think of corbelling, however there's only one rough-edged ?slab on the left extending as a near triangular shape 0.25m along and 0.6m from the back left corner, with drystane walling above, and one on the right a slab 0.45m long and only 0.1m from the back right corner. Apart from the section of walling and the 'ledges' the structure is of slab construction (the slab at right back does feel like a standing stone re-used though). The base is hidden by a couple of short bits of wood and a thin layer of other rubbish. Almost feels like part of a souterrain, certainly something of at least that age.
ST.MAGNUS'S WELL
RCAHMS NMRS No. HY22NE 9 is now shown by a corroded iron pump-head over a modern square drystone construction at HY25652750. St.Magnus' well was known for it's healing quantities. The record show's the present site as being remembered neither as being said well or for healing qualities. Given the high density of wells shown on the 1882 O.S. maps of Orkney (half-a-dozen or more in The Barony) it is possible that there is no identity, but modern absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, people did move about within these isles (a similar example comes from a 1966 Ordnance Survey enquiry about Crantit - the reference was two centuries old and the present farmers had only been there a few decades).
Coming to Birsay directly after the working mill is a side road for the Barony Hotel. The well is at the side of this road not far from the junction. The mediocre description is all too accurate. But the surrounding environ promises there was once a more ancient site hereabouts, either side of the road looks promising. Of course it could be the original well lay further down/up the slope (in Yesnaby there was a Crossiekield holy well near St. Bride's Chapel. No wells appear thereabouts in 1882 and I strongly suspect that it lay opposite the Brough of Bigging) or resembled more a spring. Over the road can be seen a rounded stone several feet long. Min came to mind. If this 'phallic' object is original perhaps this was alway's Man's Well locally and the St. Magnus apellation used by the toffs or to impress enquirers ?
NABBAN HY391118
I had been along the old Finstown road several times going to Kirkwall and so was quite surprised to see a rectangular hole in the RH road verge (HY391118). Closer too it resembled more a cist formed of thin slabs set against one of those broad patches of turf that cross ditches to let farmers onto their fields. When I came to this ?tank I saw that it actually lay in the midst of two such bridgings, each 5m across. Kinda weird. The feature appear sub-rectangular because the edge of one slab has moved forward slightly,it would have measured 0.9 by 0.8m and is 0.5m deep. To the naked eye the 'tank' is certainly a little forward of the ditch line but a pic doesn't appear to bear this out.
On my second visit it took me walking twice over the ground before I found it again. Now that the water-levels are much lower it has more the appearance of a well than a cist, the full depth 0.9m (as far as I could find) with what I took for the bottom being ledges on two sides. The ledges make you think of corbelling but there's only one rough-edged ?slab on the left extending as a near triangular shape 0.25m along and 0.6m from the back left corner, with drystane walling above, and one on the right a slab 0.45m long and only 0.1m from the back right corner. Apart from the section of walling and the 'ledges' the structure is of slab construction (including a triangular stone making up the right back). The base is hidden by a couple of short bits of wood and a thin layer of other rubbish. Almost feels like part of a souterrain, certainly something of at least that age.
P.S. revised my opinion back to its being a short cist (?double?) on finding that one at Queenimoan had an erect stone wholly buried at one end. Ending the enigma this is my best fit.
LESLIEDALE HY406108
As the road went over the side of Wideford Hill there was another revelation on the downhill verge in the form of an arc of stones 2.9x1.2m I'd never noticed before (HY406108). This turned out to be the top of a bridge/culvert. My theory as to why I hadn't spotted it other times is that the farmer has been grubbing out the dykes (and it does look good, though in my estimation they are a little overenthusiastic nowadays and that isn't useful maintenance). The other side of the road is smaller through being uphill; a slab platform to the outside of that ditch 0.3m high by 0.4m with a stone either side taking that to 0.6m, then an 'entrance' 0.3m high with a 5cm lintel. By contrast the downhill end has an entrance 0.5m high by 0.4m with a lintel 0.75m across set in a observable drystane wall 1m high which extends 1.5m from it in the Finstown direction and an apparent 0.8m from it in the Kirkwall direction. As I say, the passage goes under the road. But a flash picture reveals signs of two different dates of construction because it shows a thick slab going across the passage (as if it has fallen) with soil in front of it and the passage floor this side covered by a layer of 'modern' conglomerate. Visual artistry apart the reason why I am struck by this site, if I can call it that, is that I have made many observations of such structures in Orkney and though many of them have a straight edge with drystane walls curving in front either side like horns this is the only one I have seen with a curved front and straight walls extending either side. A possibility is that when the road widening took place this had some loadbearing function ? Damn fine whatever.
PEERIE HOWE
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY50SW 12 at HY54750324 was probably a burnt mound - there were burnt stones in a rich midden in the nearby cliff. In 1964 what remained of the fragmented mound still stood 2m high. It held a great deal of midden material and traces of a drystane wall. Firteen years later the cliff-section remained but the mound itself had given way to mere broken ground. Never been excavated, no finds made.
The site lies near to the Dingieshowe Broch on the further corner of the track running by the bungalow and turning to the shore. Alternately coming along the beach in front of the broch you will see the deepset end of the track. In either case from the track proceed to where the start of the stony cliff and against this is a section of low cliff in which you can see what is left of that shell-midden (perhaps the fine nature of the particles along this part of the beach indicates that it once extended over a more sizable area ? On the other hand there is the midden along the Bay of Taracliff below the mound and enclosure of Sandaiken, where large boulders lie instead almost to the cliff-face). JUst look out for the big tyre in the section You can see still the obvious burnt stones, these and the shells embedded in an earthy matrix of red and black. The top is marked by the tyre and a sheet of corrugated these marking it off from some rather heavy-handed landscaping above.
Decided to have another look for earthwork remains on the land. Someone has been very creative with rocks and boulders and flags, a mish-mash of an 'architectural' garden at the corner where the track meets the shore. Probably not where the mound remains where, fortunately. No, that area is likely to have been 'next-door' where a vaguely rectangular plot of land sits down from the track with some scattered breeze blocks lie about the middle of the hollow. Any investigations will have to wait many months as the tall grass obscures all. This may or may not hide the scant remains of the mound. But if the site is here it is obvious that, though not under a threat sufficient to cause official alarm, if someone chose to co-opt this piece to carry on (say) the 'garden' it would be many many moons before anyone found out.
One thing burnt mounds seem to require is a constant supply of water, but there is apparent no nearby burn. Half-way up the straight bit of track to Turnpike the well on the left HY54690310 is simply a depression on a level(led) section of the hill. The 1882 map shows another well HY54650298 a liitle further up only along the clifftop but not the present well by the Deerness road. Neither suitable then. So unless saltwater were suitable they presumably used a long-gone watercourse by which we can assume the broch to have been built ?later.
HIGHBRECK
Along the Orphir road just past Highbreck is an intriguing earthwork (HY35700640) in the hollow of which a chicken feeder had been placed. There is a regular scoop that resembles in size and shape the space left by the removal a small croft, say. But the 1882 map shows no habitations in that entire tract of land apart from Akesley, even Highbreck is modern. Then directly behind the back of this rectangular negative space (that is, next up in this seemingly unmapped mound) is another of less regular shape that has a high back up to the top. The boundary between certainly appears man-made and on the RH side at the upper level seems to be a short exposed length of crude walling. Moving along and looking back you can see that this is merely the roadside end of what appears to be a large circular bank, possibly a quadrant of something. Though the 1882 O.S. map shows a circular earthwork here with the legend 'gravel pit' which the NMRS names as a possible source for Graystane over the road, in "The Book of Orphir" James Omond before coming to the latter describes a virtually levelled circular building near the road from which came "some curious shaped stones" including part of a saddle quern. He added that Cursiter believed to it to be a small hill fort.
Omond added that he thought a similar structure lay below Greenigoe, also in Orphir, from which came "hundreds of loads of small stones" . It is surely no coincidence that J.W.Cursiter found a cist nearby (HY40NW 8 at HY407025 which produced various cloth fragments, an amber bead and one of vitreous paste).
SAVEROCK
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY41SW 5 shown on the 1882 map at HY12701296. The souterrain was excavated in the winter of 1848-9 by a Captain and his men, aided by George Petrie. CANMAP looks fractionally in error (HY12681296) as the 20-30' seacliff is up by the new pier rather than at where (Lower) Saverock farmhouse used to be. Petrie locates it at the sea cliff and close enough that he believed one arm once continued to the edge. In 1860 he found rude firebaked clay pottery fragments in the cliff debris (he may have visited other times as the published reports do not mention the bird's claw bronze fragment he found in the souterrain wall, or indeed any metal). His reasons for initially suspecting a broch were that the souterrain lay in a large mound bigger than any of such type he found as of 1860 and that there were "traces of a great mass of building above and around it" (Wilson says material had been used "for building a neighbouring farm-house and offices" before the Captain came. This would have been the present-day Saverock). In the published article he amended this to "a burg or other superstructure" - one is reminded of the settlement suggested by Baillin-Smith for the area around the Grainbank earth-houses not far away.
KNOWE OF GEOSO
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY21NW 19 at HY22821792 is an overgrown eminence of small stones and earth generally called the Knowe of Geoso. It was [?]mistakenly thought to be a broch by association with the dwelling of Brockan in the diagonally opposite corner of a field below [itself now mistakenly placed at the quarry in the adjacent field's corner, Brockan here being a name which like the Hillock of Breakna signifies 'broken (hillside)']. This turf-covered mound despite much 'quarrying' is still about 0.8m high and roughly 25m across, and has barely breaking the surface in the exact centre a 0.4m long slab that could be what remains of a cist. To the SE [i.e. immediate left as you come up from Skaill Home Farm] there lie nine stones of more monumental size in an arc that probably preceded the knowe, having significant weathering and not sharing a commonality of centre with it.
From Skaill House you can see the line of two field walls running from behind Skaill Home Farm (originally The Mount) all the way to the top. From near the site of Brockan (HY23031797, the now dry deepcut streambed that gave its name to the Knowe of Geoso lying in the same field) looking across I saw a low flat hillock and a small peaky mound. When I had a closer look I saw they were the same site viewed looking from the SE along a curving hollow. Which means that from down below the whole of the flattened hilltop is the knowe. So it feels quite large when you get there. I was also surprised to find that from this ridge you can see not only all the way down to the Bay of Skaill and across but also down to the Broch of Borthwick (built on the site of an earlier structure) and beyond. A view as near panoramic as another chambered mound at Hurkisgarth (HY25451770) - perhaps in part these functioned as early precursors to the ward hills?
Though at this time the grass is lower here than at the likes of the Hillock of Breakna the supposed cist slab would still be rendered invisible. There seemed to be various depressions underfoot but the most obvious feature is that deep large curved 'passage' carving up the mound. The knowe is described as "greatly mutilated by quarrying" which I doubt would be the case if this had been a simple mound of earth and small stones. I imagine more obvious stones having been extracted long ago, but there could well be some left below the present ground surface.
Perhaps my assumption of larger stones within the mound does relate to the O.S arc of earthfast stones just outside the area of the mound itself. Not having remembered about these I approached them afresh. What took my eye first was an apparent grouping of three of inconsistent appearance - one of bent bi-cuboid shape, one a small flat rock, the largest cracked and pockmarked - but these were merely the tops of these earthfast stones. Forgot to measure them but the smallest was on the order of a foot across the shortest dimension. This grouping is near the middle left of the mound. Nearer to the southern end lie two triangular stones against each other, one much larger than the other. These rest in a distinct depression that is additionally marked by different vegetation from that surrounding.
KONGAR'S KNOWE HY347052
As you go down the road to Gyre Kongarsknowe is on the left a couple of field's away from the road. Last week I tried a direct approach. Unfortunately the old hill dyke boundary is a formidable obstacle still, broad and deep and mired in vegetation, so at first I had to content myself with standing on top of the almost buried wall this side of the dyke.
[On trying to find a way further down I thought I was in luck when I saw two tall stones across the dyke, but though I thought there were other materials there I could not see through the plants. Only after I came back did I realise that this was the old gate in the boundary referred to by Johnston (HY347050) else I would certainly have taken preliminary photos and measurements. It resembles the common farm gate using middling standing stones for posts, only with a width more on the order of a domestic garden gate].
Going back up the road I entered the quarry field (used for building the slab fences hereabouts in the early to mid-19th century) and from the opposite corner (whose 'Orkney gate' was thankfully down) walked across into the Kongarsknowe field. At present there is a large circular standing pool of water by the lower half of the turf-covered mound, probably in a natural depression. What was most necessary was to find out the knowe's composition. Even from afar I had seen exposed bits. Looked like the usual earth with a few small stones. Only up real close did this reveal itself to be mostly ?decayed rock, probably sandstone. Though there appeared to be no signs of structure I cannot believe this to be a (wholly) natural mound. Unable to tell its shape and there was too much wind for the tape measure. It paced out to about 70m around the steeper, unploughed, main bit. From here the mound slopes more gradually until it peters out somewhat over 90m circumference. The central portion (? rocky core) is well over two meters high (possibly three) and the 'base' another metre below that.
GUTTERPOOL HY467034
Going down to St.Mary's is the farm road to Gutterpool. Alongside the road downhill is a very large patch of disturbed ground, broken up by streams and hillocks, that seems to be ignored by every map. How can something be so extensive (half a field or more) and not have a name or legend appear on the map. Definitely not a quarry (no rock outcrop or similar apart from a small gravelpit up at the farm itself, and this is basically an earthen site), though presumably heavily dug into. One can only wonder as to its appearance before the present road blocked the water's egress.
Just before you come to Kirkbreck there is the presently un-signed farm road that eventually goes to Backakelday. I went to look at a stone up the Backakelday road and was surprised by what else I found on the RH side. Beginning 15m along the track HY46730333 is an exposed section 3m long and 0.8m deep that I have not noticed previously, connected with a fairly new plastic water pipe and cable/duct. The exposed structures have been modernised with concrete. Running beside the road is a drystone-lined channel 0.3m wide and under the road is a culvert. The 'culvert' here is 0.4m wide internally and has out-turned ends and a very slim coverstone (surmounted by an apparently later piece of thick stone (or possibly concrete ?) and of fine stone contruction on at least one side, perhaps less so on the other. What I would call a nave bridge. The other end, along the track's LH edge, is composed entirely of modern blocks. But what strikes one is the two disturbed large stones that top the channel wall opposite the 'culvert' that fill that side of the exposure. That without the concrete covering has slipped forward furthest and besides being 1.4m by 0.5m is also 0.4m deep. Though the stones beneath are more your average drystane walling the whole feeling is of monumentality. Not sure what to name this site or whether it is a window on one type of monument or two. One could imagine a post-1882 farmer making a drain alongside a new farmroad (the 1882 map shows only a plain field edge where the road is now, not so much as a dyke or stream.) except that it looks constrained by the presence of something earlier, so tight the sides. I would not place it any later than late Viking or possibly very early mediaeval.
GYRE
Above the stackyard of Gyre is the findspot (HY34030473) for what A.W. Johnston called 'chambered cinerary urns', which Anne Brundle of the Orkney Museum believes to have been used at the time to describe cists with divisions. Amazingly it is still unenclosed, occupying an area several metres in either direction that lies between the section of road above the stackyard and the field boundary walls. There are a few stones that appear to be the top of a short section of walling, but as the late 19th century road cuts through an older arrangement they are probably connected with that rather than the findspot.
It can be no coincidence that in 1974 a double cist HY30SW 12 was found by the stackyard the other side of the road (HY34090464). The archaeologist agrees with me that this area could therefore be the remains of a barrow cemetery. If the interpretation of Johnston's term is correct what is the reason for such a number of double cists in one location?
RCAHMS NMRS No. HY22NE 9 is now shown by a corroded iron pump-head over a modern square drystone construction at HY25652750. St.Magnus' well was known for it's healing quantities. The record show's the present site as being remembered neither as being said well or for healing qualities. Given the high density of wells shown on the 1882 O.S. maps of Orkney (half-a-dozen or more in The Barony) it is possible that there is no identity, but modern absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, people did move about within these isles (a similar example comes from a 1966 Ordnance Survey enquiry about Crantit - the reference was two centuries old and the present farmers had only been there a few decades).
Coming to Birsay directly after the working mill is a side road for the Barony Hotel. The well is at the side of this road not far from the junction. The mediocre description is all too accurate. But the surrounding environ promises there was once a more ancient site hereabouts, either side of the road looks promising. Of course it could be the original well lay further down/up the slope (in Yesnaby there was a Crossiekield holy well near St. Bride's Chapel. No wells appear thereabouts in 1882 and I strongly suspect that it lay opposite the Brough of Bigging) or resembled more a spring. Over the road can be seen a rounded stone several feet long. Min came to mind. If this 'phallic' object is original perhaps this was alway's Man's Well locally and the St. Magnus apellation used by the toffs or to impress enquirers ?
NABBAN HY391118
I had been along the old Finstown road several times going to Kirkwall and so was quite surprised to see a rectangular hole in the RH road verge (HY391118). Closer too it resembled more a cist formed of thin slabs set against one of those broad patches of turf that cross ditches to let farmers onto their fields. When I came to this ?tank I saw that it actually lay in the midst of two such bridgings, each 5m across. Kinda weird. The feature appear sub-rectangular because the edge of one slab has moved forward slightly,it would have measured 0.9 by 0.8m and is 0.5m deep. To the naked eye the 'tank' is certainly a little forward of the ditch line but a pic doesn't appear to bear this out.
On my second visit it took me walking twice over the ground before I found it again. Now that the water-levels are much lower it has more the appearance of a well than a cist, the full depth 0.9m (as far as I could find) with what I took for the bottom being ledges on two sides. The ledges make you think of corbelling but there's only one rough-edged ?slab on the left extending as a near triangular shape 0.25m along and 0.6m from the back left corner, with drystane walling above, and one on the right a slab 0.45m long and only 0.1m from the back right corner. Apart from the section of walling and the 'ledges' the structure is of slab construction (including a triangular stone making up the right back). The base is hidden by a couple of short bits of wood and a thin layer of other rubbish. Almost feels like part of a souterrain, certainly something of at least that age.
P.S. revised my opinion back to its being a short cist (?double?) on finding that one at Queenimoan had an erect stone wholly buried at one end. Ending the enigma this is my best fit.
LESLIEDALE HY406108
As the road went over the side of Wideford Hill there was another revelation on the downhill verge in the form of an arc of stones 2.9x1.2m I'd never noticed before (HY406108). This turned out to be the top of a bridge/culvert. My theory as to why I hadn't spotted it other times is that the farmer has been grubbing out the dykes (and it does look good, though in my estimation they are a little overenthusiastic nowadays and that isn't useful maintenance). The other side of the road is smaller through being uphill; a slab platform to the outside of that ditch 0.3m high by 0.4m with a stone either side taking that to 0.6m, then an 'entrance' 0.3m high with a 5cm lintel. By contrast the downhill end has an entrance 0.5m high by 0.4m with a lintel 0.75m across set in a observable drystane wall 1m high which extends 1.5m from it in the Finstown direction and an apparent 0.8m from it in the Kirkwall direction. As I say, the passage goes under the road. But a flash picture reveals signs of two different dates of construction because it shows a thick slab going across the passage (as if it has fallen) with soil in front of it and the passage floor this side covered by a layer of 'modern' conglomerate. Visual artistry apart the reason why I am struck by this site, if I can call it that, is that I have made many observations of such structures in Orkney and though many of them have a straight edge with drystane walls curving in front either side like horns this is the only one I have seen with a curved front and straight walls extending either side. A possibility is that when the road widening took place this had some loadbearing function ? Damn fine whatever.
PEERIE HOWE
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY50SW 12 at HY54750324 was probably a burnt mound - there were burnt stones in a rich midden in the nearby cliff. In 1964 what remained of the fragmented mound still stood 2m high. It held a great deal of midden material and traces of a drystane wall. Firteen years later the cliff-section remained but the mound itself had given way to mere broken ground. Never been excavated, no finds made.
The site lies near to the Dingieshowe Broch on the further corner of the track running by the bungalow and turning to the shore. Alternately coming along the beach in front of the broch you will see the deepset end of the track. In either case from the track proceed to where the start of the stony cliff and against this is a section of low cliff in which you can see what is left of that shell-midden (perhaps the fine nature of the particles along this part of the beach indicates that it once extended over a more sizable area ? On the other hand there is the midden along the Bay of Taracliff below the mound and enclosure of Sandaiken, where large boulders lie instead almost to the cliff-face). JUst look out for the big tyre in the section You can see still the obvious burnt stones, these and the shells embedded in an earthy matrix of red and black. The top is marked by the tyre and a sheet of corrugated these marking it off from some rather heavy-handed landscaping above.
Decided to have another look for earthwork remains on the land. Someone has been very creative with rocks and boulders and flags, a mish-mash of an 'architectural' garden at the corner where the track meets the shore. Probably not where the mound remains where, fortunately. No, that area is likely to have been 'next-door' where a vaguely rectangular plot of land sits down from the track with some scattered breeze blocks lie about the middle of the hollow. Any investigations will have to wait many months as the tall grass obscures all. This may or may not hide the scant remains of the mound. But if the site is here it is obvious that, though not under a threat sufficient to cause official alarm, if someone chose to co-opt this piece to carry on (say) the 'garden' it would be many many moons before anyone found out.
One thing burnt mounds seem to require is a constant supply of water, but there is apparent no nearby burn. Half-way up the straight bit of track to Turnpike the well on the left HY54690310 is simply a depression on a level(led) section of the hill. The 1882 map shows another well HY54650298 a liitle further up only along the clifftop but not the present well by the Deerness road. Neither suitable then. So unless saltwater were suitable they presumably used a long-gone watercourse by which we can assume the broch to have been built ?later.
HIGHBRECK
Along the Orphir road just past Highbreck is an intriguing earthwork (HY35700640) in the hollow of which a chicken feeder had been placed. There is a regular scoop that resembles in size and shape the space left by the removal a small croft, say. But the 1882 map shows no habitations in that entire tract of land apart from Akesley, even Highbreck is modern. Then directly behind the back of this rectangular negative space (that is, next up in this seemingly unmapped mound) is another of less regular shape that has a high back up to the top. The boundary between certainly appears man-made and on the RH side at the upper level seems to be a short exposed length of crude walling. Moving along and looking back you can see that this is merely the roadside end of what appears to be a large circular bank, possibly a quadrant of something. Though the 1882 O.S. map shows a circular earthwork here with the legend 'gravel pit' which the NMRS names as a possible source for Graystane over the road, in "The Book of Orphir" James Omond before coming to the latter describes a virtually levelled circular building near the road from which came "some curious shaped stones" including part of a saddle quern. He added that Cursiter believed to it to be a small hill fort.
Omond added that he thought a similar structure lay below Greenigoe, also in Orphir, from which came "hundreds of loads of small stones" . It is surely no coincidence that J.W.Cursiter found a cist nearby (HY40NW 8 at HY407025 which produced various cloth fragments, an amber bead and one of vitreous paste).
SAVEROCK
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY41SW 5 shown on the 1882 map at HY12701296. The souterrain was excavated in the winter of 1848-9 by a Captain and his men, aided by George Petrie. CANMAP looks fractionally in error (HY12681296) as the 20-30' seacliff is up by the new pier rather than at where (Lower) Saverock farmhouse used to be. Petrie locates it at the sea cliff and close enough that he believed one arm once continued to the edge. In 1860 he found rude firebaked clay pottery fragments in the cliff debris (he may have visited other times as the published reports do not mention the bird's claw bronze fragment he found in the souterrain wall, or indeed any metal). His reasons for initially suspecting a broch were that the souterrain lay in a large mound bigger than any of such type he found as of 1860 and that there were "traces of a great mass of building above and around it" (Wilson says material had been used "for building a neighbouring farm-house and offices" before the Captain came. This would have been the present-day Saverock). In the published article he amended this to "a burg or other superstructure" - one is reminded of the settlement suggested by Baillin-Smith for the area around the Grainbank earth-houses not far away.
KNOWE OF GEOSO
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY21NW 19 at HY22821792 is an overgrown eminence of small stones and earth generally called the Knowe of Geoso. It was [?]mistakenly thought to be a broch by association with the dwelling of Brockan in the diagonally opposite corner of a field below [itself now mistakenly placed at the quarry in the adjacent field's corner, Brockan here being a name which like the Hillock of Breakna signifies 'broken (hillside)']. This turf-covered mound despite much 'quarrying' is still about 0.8m high and roughly 25m across, and has barely breaking the surface in the exact centre a 0.4m long slab that could be what remains of a cist. To the SE [i.e. immediate left as you come up from Skaill Home Farm] there lie nine stones of more monumental size in an arc that probably preceded the knowe, having significant weathering and not sharing a commonality of centre with it.
From Skaill House you can see the line of two field walls running from behind Skaill Home Farm (originally The Mount) all the way to the top. From near the site of Brockan (HY23031797, the now dry deepcut streambed that gave its name to the Knowe of Geoso lying in the same field) looking across I saw a low flat hillock and a small peaky mound. When I had a closer look I saw they were the same site viewed looking from the SE along a curving hollow. Which means that from down below the whole of the flattened hilltop is the knowe. So it feels quite large when you get there. I was also surprised to find that from this ridge you can see not only all the way down to the Bay of Skaill and across but also down to the Broch of Borthwick (built on the site of an earlier structure) and beyond. A view as near panoramic as another chambered mound at Hurkisgarth (HY25451770) - perhaps in part these functioned as early precursors to the ward hills?
Though at this time the grass is lower here than at the likes of the Hillock of Breakna the supposed cist slab would still be rendered invisible. There seemed to be various depressions underfoot but the most obvious feature is that deep large curved 'passage' carving up the mound. The knowe is described as "greatly mutilated by quarrying" which I doubt would be the case if this had been a simple mound of earth and small stones. I imagine more obvious stones having been extracted long ago, but there could well be some left below the present ground surface.
Perhaps my assumption of larger stones within the mound does relate to the O.S arc of earthfast stones just outside the area of the mound itself. Not having remembered about these I approached them afresh. What took my eye first was an apparent grouping of three of inconsistent appearance - one of bent bi-cuboid shape, one a small flat rock, the largest cracked and pockmarked - but these were merely the tops of these earthfast stones. Forgot to measure them but the smallest was on the order of a foot across the shortest dimension. This grouping is near the middle left of the mound. Nearer to the southern end lie two triangular stones against each other, one much larger than the other. These rest in a distinct depression that is additionally marked by different vegetation from that surrounding.
KONGAR'S KNOWE HY347052
As you go down the road to Gyre Kongarsknowe is on the left a couple of field's away from the road. Last week I tried a direct approach. Unfortunately the old hill dyke boundary is a formidable obstacle still, broad and deep and mired in vegetation, so at first I had to content myself with standing on top of the almost buried wall this side of the dyke.
[On trying to find a way further down I thought I was in luck when I saw two tall stones across the dyke, but though I thought there were other materials there I could not see through the plants. Only after I came back did I realise that this was the old gate in the boundary referred to by Johnston (HY347050) else I would certainly have taken preliminary photos and measurements. It resembles the common farm gate using middling standing stones for posts, only with a width more on the order of a domestic garden gate].
Going back up the road I entered the quarry field (used for building the slab fences hereabouts in the early to mid-19th century) and from the opposite corner (whose 'Orkney gate' was thankfully down) walked across into the Kongarsknowe field. At present there is a large circular standing pool of water by the lower half of the turf-covered mound, probably in a natural depression. What was most necessary was to find out the knowe's composition. Even from afar I had seen exposed bits. Looked like the usual earth with a few small stones. Only up real close did this reveal itself to be mostly ?decayed rock, probably sandstone. Though there appeared to be no signs of structure I cannot believe this to be a (wholly) natural mound. Unable to tell its shape and there was too much wind for the tape measure. It paced out to about 70m around the steeper, unploughed, main bit. From here the mound slopes more gradually until it peters out somewhat over 90m circumference. The central portion (? rocky core) is well over two meters high (possibly three) and the 'base' another metre below that.
GUTTERPOOL HY467034
Going down to St.Mary's is the farm road to Gutterpool. Alongside the road downhill is a very large patch of disturbed ground, broken up by streams and hillocks, that seems to be ignored by every map. How can something be so extensive (half a field or more) and not have a name or legend appear on the map. Definitely not a quarry (no rock outcrop or similar apart from a small gravelpit up at the farm itself, and this is basically an earthen site), though presumably heavily dug into. One can only wonder as to its appearance before the present road blocked the water's egress.
Just before you come to Kirkbreck there is the presently un-signed farm road that eventually goes to Backakelday. I went to look at a stone up the Backakelday road and was surprised by what else I found on the RH side. Beginning 15m along the track HY46730333 is an exposed section 3m long and 0.8m deep that I have not noticed previously, connected with a fairly new plastic water pipe and cable/duct. The exposed structures have been modernised with concrete. Running beside the road is a drystone-lined channel 0.3m wide and under the road is a culvert. The 'culvert' here is 0.4m wide internally and has out-turned ends and a very slim coverstone (surmounted by an apparently later piece of thick stone (or possibly concrete ?) and of fine stone contruction on at least one side, perhaps less so on the other. What I would call a nave bridge. The other end, along the track's LH edge, is composed entirely of modern blocks. But what strikes one is the two disturbed large stones that top the channel wall opposite the 'culvert' that fill that side of the exposure. That without the concrete covering has slipped forward furthest and besides being 1.4m by 0.5m is also 0.4m deep. Though the stones beneath are more your average drystane walling the whole feeling is of monumentality. Not sure what to name this site or whether it is a window on one type of monument or two. One could imagine a post-1882 farmer making a drain alongside a new farmroad (the 1882 map shows only a plain field edge where the road is now, not so much as a dyke or stream.) except that it looks constrained by the presence of something earlier, so tight the sides. I would not place it any later than late Viking or possibly very early mediaeval.
GYRE
Above the stackyard of Gyre is the findspot (HY34030473) for what A.W. Johnston called 'chambered cinerary urns', which Anne Brundle of the Orkney Museum believes to have been used at the time to describe cists with divisions. Amazingly it is still unenclosed, occupying an area several metres in either direction that lies between the section of road above the stackyard and the field boundary walls. There are a few stones that appear to be the top of a short section of walling, but as the late 19th century road cuts through an older arrangement they are probably connected with that rather than the findspot.
It can be no coincidence that in 1974 a double cist HY30SW 12 was found by the stackyard the other side of the road (HY34090464). The archaeologist agrees with me that this area could therefore be the remains of a barrow cemetery. If the interpretation of Johnston's term is correct what is the reason for such a number of double cists in one location?
