Sunday, April 08, 2012
BROCH OF NETLATER, HARRAy, ORKNEY
The Nettletar/Netlater Broch was revealed in about 1860 when the Rev.Dr.Trail excavated a large mound some 200 yards south of the manse, and hard by the present course of the Burn of Nettleton, whilst making improvements to his land. Roughly five years later local antiquarian George Petrie came to investigate. He published his observations and plans (from sketches) in an 1873 article. Later there are joint manuscripts with Sir Henry Dryden including annotated elevations. In his article Petrie mostly described what he personally saw and, strangely, nowhere gives the like of wall heights - perhaps these only came with Dryden's 1866 measurements. Modern commentators give Petrie 'stick' for things he only took from others observations or indeed never mentioned as seen by him. tIt is much to be regretted that we are missing Trail's actual notes for instance, as Petrie tells us that several important features of the broch and its adjuncts had been destroyed prior to his visit. Unfortunately Dryden had the draughtsman's eye to draw things as they should have been rather than as they presented themselves.
During the 1860s improvements the Burn of Nettleton had its course straightened. From a point on the 'upper' side of the broch a small conduit was thought to connect to a well inside the tower. This conduit passed through an oval enclosure east of the broch, though at the time Petrie only saw two walls some distance apart cut through where space had been cleared [by the broch builders or Trail isn't obvious in the text, presumably the latter] in front of the broch entrance. In the space and probably within said enclosure was a deep well, entered by several steps, covered by the time of the article. Between this vanished enclosure and the 12' thick broch wall, and a yard from the latter, Petrie saw a rough stone wall (probably concentric, gone now anyway) some 3' thick and ? 5' high. Petrie was informed that this was faced only on the inner side, and by analogy with other brochs it has been since suggested that this is upper wall debris. The conduit might stop at this point. At a point outside the south-western part of the main tower hard by this wall calcine bone fragments were found in two large fire-baked clay urns. Petrie describes their appearance as "rude" but they had carefully cut triangular flagstone covers, said covers being roughly at the same level as the broch floor. Cut into the rough wall to the north side of a line from the passage, and abutting the broch tower, he saw a three foot deep cell/compartment, which at the time of his visit was the only remaining one of several found by Trail, chiefly on this same side. The cell's entrance was only 22" wide and 2'6" high. None of these ??outbuildings were properly explored. There is dispute as to whether the broch walls survived to 6'6" or 8'6" high, but during the improvements about half of the stonework was robbed for the Glebe dykes [the field walls of the land belonging to the Manse] and by 1966 we are left with only a western arc upstanding. The broch entrance (now obliterated) is aligned approximately twenty degrees south of due east. For the first six feet its width was 2'9", at which point it reached stone door jambs and broadened out to 4' wide for the last six feet. The broch's interior has a diameter of 33'4" and Laing tells us that there was a second pavement some 18" above the first. Inside on a line with, and close to the left-hand side of, the doorway there stood a radial stone about 4'9" high and 4'6" wide, with a hole about 2 inches in diameter through it within 14" of the inner edge at roughly mid-height - close to the wall at the back of this stone a human skull was found. The plan show several arrangements of wall fragments and edgeset stones (now gone [or perhaps 'buried'] ) which Petrie thought post-dated the broch, though Hedges thinks that they could actually be contemporary with it. Within the broch tower wall three oval mural cells were roughly equidistant if you include the passage. Two chambers are describes as ruinous and the third to the south was deduced from remains. From the last nineteen steps of an intra-mural staircase ran clockwise from it, suggesting that the broch once had an upper floor. A subterranean passage near the centre of the interior led to five steps that gave access to a three foot square flag-lined rock-cut well near the interior wall - the bottom of the well lay 9' below floor level. It is now choked with debris but in Petrie's time it always held water.
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY31NW 38 at HY32321741 is also known as Harray Manse, Burn of Nettleton and Noltland. If Noltland = cattle land then it has been suggested Netlater is Nolt+Clettr = cattle rock. Even so Hedges can't think of anything in the
vicinity that would have given rise to this name. I would suggest that perhaps the Vikings saw the broch mound as having been 'calved' by the burn.
On plan in looking at the outer cell remaining at the time of Petrie's notes it rather obviously cuts into the fragmentary concentric wall. So either it post-dates the broch collapse or that wall is at the very least contemporary with the cell. Could it be that the compartment is really one of the guard cells one would expect to find just inside the entrance. It survives too well to simply have been left outside the broch tower after some later re-modelling reduced the broch's diameter. So I think that the two walls are the inner and outer faces of a single wall, with the earth used as banking to shore it up. Which would give epic walls a minimum of 15' thick, similar to the East Broch of Burray which is (partly) surrounded by an earth rampart. A modern dig would be needed to give an answer to this as the two levels of interior floor surely means that the Trail/Petrie/Dryden material relates to two, perhaps more, building phases.
Labels: broch, Burn of Nettleton, Dryden, George Petrie, Harray Manse, Netlater, Nettletar, Rev Dr Trail
Sunday, April 01, 2012
AT HOLM WITH BATTERIES February 11th 2012
For some reason the online Holm circular walks (http://www.walkorkney.co.uk/) haven't made it from the web into books. Having already done one of these (the Graemeshall one, which despite the name only has a corner there - it is best known for the Holm & Clett batteries) I decided to do the other, the two mile St Mary's circular walk. This starts off at the edge of the village heading for the Point of Skaildaquoy. I think that in the name Point of Skaildaquoy the second part is Skelderquoy 'oystercatcher field' (and indeed online the author uses both). Once over the ayre there is a new fence that the walk now has to skirt around, I could have entered the mired field but thought there should be another entrance. The old cobbled pier that juts out has a bite from the middle and the oystercatchers were all over it. The pier is consists of a bed of slabs with side walls of smaller slabs on edge. Just after here there is a space of a few yards where you are forced onto the shore - either a few feet have eroded from this place or the fence-builder has been most inconsiderate. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of white, taking this for an owl until my binoculars revealed this bird as a male nen harrier hawking the fields. He dropped down several times and the times in between I managed several shots with my camera. Of course I should have done this when first I saw the bird, but in such situations the instinctive feeling is awe and one is just content to observe.
I found no other way in to the field and so contented myself with taking photos of the military installation from the fence. Having checked again beforehand I find the Skaildaquoy Point Battery is even earlier than I thought, being shown on the 2nd 25" O.S. drawn 1900 (having not been there in 1880 when the 1st was made). NMRS record no. HY40SE 71 at HY4720200663 is described from this thusly : two mounds in an hexagonal flagstaff enclosure with two pecked lines as perhaps gun emplacements, a narrow rectangular building 15m to the E and 60m NE a square building that is likely a magazine. To this they add a later structure seen on aerial photographs ~34m ENE.
In the field there are now only two standing structures. Having found a first small bank/moundlet before coming level with the nearest building and thought to myself this must be part of the enclosure, only to find when I looked at the 1900 map that this lay on the other side of the headland. Ah, me ! The stone-built building is slant-topped with a roof of large slabs [a few days later going to Deerness I spot the small building nestling amongst the Craw Howe mounds and it looks very similar. Could it be the mysterious Craw Howe is the remains of another such battery even though the larger mound/s are covered in thick peat - close by was a WWII ack-ack and, where the houses are now, huts]. This roof has a concrete lip at the high end and along one side. There is a tall narrow window-opening of plain design at the back. On the side adjoining there is an equally plain doorway placed at the low end. At the high end another narrow window-opening has been blocked in with more of the same stones and instead there is a small square one to its right. The most interesting features are between the blocked opening and the corner. Here there are three narrow horizontal slots arranged vertically - a half-hearted attempt has been made to block these at, I'm guessing, a later date.
Not far away is a rectangular building and over at the far side of the point, by the cliff edge I see two thin wings of stone like a butterfly bun or V for Victory. It is as if a giant gave a slab a karate chop. But back to that structure. The roofless building is roughly three times length to breadth. The main body is the same stonework as the battery but its framed openings are keyed blocks of stone with inset moulding - they put me in mind of the creations (both sacred and secular) of Earl Stewart's time, expressive works of art - which to my mind rules out its being the NMRS "later structure". There is a high square window opening at one end and a full height doorway at the other. In my images I see a short metal bar at the inside of the window opening and a square hole in the inner side wall near the window. The latter's top is at the same level as the bottom of the window's lintel, which position appears to rule out my original thought that this held a large timber to support the lost roof. From Skaildaquoy Point you can see across to the WWII battery on nearby Lamb Holm and in the distance, the other side of Churchill Barrier No.1, the WWI+II battery/batteries of Holm and Clett. No reason not to suspect that this battery was re-used in the 20th century.
The rectangular building is just within the north-easterly side of the six-sided enclosure, which has unequal sides (three of which fan out to match the coastline) and is orientated not quite NE/SW. To me the enclosure is simply a jumble of low banks. But then, not knowing that this was it I did not 'have my eye in' ! This side of the headland seems to have taken the brunt of erosion because of its relative height, so it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that that I come across at the Victory sign is part of the battery itself. What I find is that the vee had been [I think] the roofing slab of a stone-lined passage under a low mound below it. My first thought is that this was another of those jobbies where a tractor has fallen through the top of a souterrain. However the stonework is nearer to that of the other buildings. Then I remember where I have seen something similar, though in that case over the passage is a concrete roof with the whole being part of what I would call a bunker, not knowing better, and it too has a low earth mound over the main body. This is in a field beside the Tradespark road. In this same field are the scant remains of the Heathery Loan WWII radio transmitter station. Though all that remains of this are scattered foundations as far as I can find out no-one has noted the 'bunker'. As I said 'getting your eye in' is king. The Holm passage's walls are mostly thin stone but there is a jumble of large stuff. There looks to be a wall, or at least blocking stones, where the cliff edge is. The inland end is probably the entrance and has squared off blocks either side. Continuing on the path I find a place reasonably safe to make my way onto the shore from and work back to the passage. From the shore a patchwork of stone definitely looks like the end wall is right at the edge - I am fairly sure of one side and the 'eye of faith' finds most of the other.
From the point the cliff lowers to the innermost part of the Bay of Sandber. Once you have bridged the Loch of Ayre's outlet you start to climb to greater heights. Almost at the cliff's edge I see what must have been a boundary stone, albeit a low one. Looking uphill I can see the start of the farmtrack headed northwards but is gated and this trail goes along the coastline instead. Ahead I see a modern stile continuing the walk. I think it's before this that there is very clear evidence of wholescale slippage in the form of an incomplete bite out of the cliff, a long arc in the grass several yards deep that the mind's eye sees falling into the sea below within the next few heavy storms. Even I decide to give this landslip a wide berth just in case ! The stile is a little too close to the edge for me after the rains we've had, and so I climb the fence more than I would normally in case the top of the stile swung me about.
I thought it wouldn't take me long to finish the walk only to find myself investigating lots of WWII archaeology, with a coastal battery not in Jeff Dorman's otherwise excellent book.
Continuing along the path I was intrigued by what looked like charcoal twigs sticking up on the skyline to my left. Going over revealed them as metal brackets in a ringed bank with a big hollow interior. At several places the bank had been cut into for small structures of concrete and corrugated iron. Though I have used the recorded names used for the wartime archaeology these have been chosen by me to give each (sub-)site a memorable identity for the reader. So this is Musie Geo light anti-aircraft gun emplacement, with lockers for the 'ammo'. RCAHMS NMRS no. HY40SE 39 lives at grid reference HY46490082. It sits beside the fence and further along a little hillock has a bank going coastward to where there is what I took for a modern hut, which I will come to in a minute. The geo itself is to the SSW. To the W of the ack-ack is a big chunk out of the high cliffs called Hesti Geo. Peering down I saw big waves crashing into the sea caves on its north side where the folds geology of narrow Clads Ber sticks out, though to me they seem to continue on the other side. The shore on the other side resembles a pavement of extremely long edgeset stones seperated from the lower part of the cliffs by a gravel 'path'. Went for a looksee at the tiny hillock and the bank but unable to fathom it out, and can find nothing on returning home either. Going back towards the hut I see nearby an arrangement of four square concrete piles with reinforcing rods pointing at the sky. Decided whilst there might as well have a closer look at that concrete block fabricated hut just in case it might be more photogenic this side. Glad I did or I would have missed out big time. There's a single door and a small window opening opposite it. At the back inside were two debris filled pits at the corners. The RH pit is larger and water-filled, and on closer inspection there is an intriguing narrow slot at the top in the wall. Each corner of the interior has a pair of thin blackened slots running from top to bottom that I feel held inner walls in place. The hut and the piles make up the Clads Ber site, HY40SE 38 at HY4645400897, which is strongly thought to be a WWII radio station with mast bases.
Whilst I have been taking my photos along comes a proper photographer and sits on a 'pile'. A resplendent male in red, white and green, rucksack on his back with his enormous overcompensating lens watching the birdies. Not the place I would have chosen to film fulmars myself. There you are perpetually looking down at them whilst on the clifftops above Taracliff Bay, for example, thare are places you can simultaneously see up and down and across !
Not much further along the path I see a concrete foundation by that fence with a long run-up. From the path a track with two deep ruts goes to that twin ramp, and I follow it, moving from side to side to avoid the swampy bits. The local sheep decide they too want their photo took, one even coming onto the ramp with me. The structure is built of large composite stone blocks. Within is a narrow rectangular hollow matching in width lines continuing the inner faces of the ramp. Nothing within. Outside the structure steps come in at an odd angle to the N wall, abut it but stop strangely short of the top. Its angle matches the drain shown on Pastmap, this coming in from the NW just as the cable trench is said to. At the NE corner a very staight drain, not depicted, from the N suddenly stops, going nowhere, and actually this would be my candidate for a trench. This site is the ramp and platform for the Howequoy Mobile Radar Unit, HY40SE35.01 at HY4646101070. From here the track ran through water-logged land. to the north a fence seperated me from an obvious military installation, so I went across for a look in case this was as near as I could get. Along the way there were large concrete foundations. Turns out these are all that is left of an accomodation camp going with the site next door.
This complex is Howequoy Battery, HY40SE 35 at HY4635101271. After photographing it from points by the fence I went up and rejoined the track, which passes by the east fence. Now I saw a way in, an 'Orkney gate'. Unfortunately this is secured by a
barbed-wire loop, an effective padlock against that super-intelligent sheep, man. Difficult to match the record to what's on the ground as parts went at various times and some descriptions seem to be duplications. 1) First mention is a couple of earth banked gun emplacements and a command control bunker, 2) command centre as concrete and earth in a tumbled mass, hut bases, decoy battery of four buildings W of command post. From outside using several viewpoints east to west I can distinguish four distinct parts,all of stone blocks and all set into banks, all but one amongst walls of the same stone blocks - i) possibly L-shaped buildings face one another ii) a couple of open-faced structures at 45-90 degrees from one another [oh, and possibly another structure by itself] iii) four open-faced structures at right angles to one another [one has pairs of smallish {?sub-}rectangular holes below the concrete top on opposing walls] iiii) a much larger rectangular structure. The last and most westerly stands out from the rest and has an outer wash/coating. Most of its apertures are now stuffed with irregular stone blocks and the uphill bank has old large wide planks and a couple of big stones where it abuts the building. I'm surely not doing the battery justice and am probably mis-reading what I see, but unless someone like the ODIN Network goes into the field to make a survey my photos will have to do as Dorman somehow missed or left it out.
The track then joins a road. I considered going on to the Westerbister road. But time was marching on and I felt I would gain no better views of the South Isles, and St Ola in the distance, than already shot by me. So my feet turned right to go to the main road. I realised that I still had time before the next bus, considered walking the main road north until the bus caught me up but simply could not resist going to the Ayre broch between the farmroad and the loch - always good to revisit places when you have a different camera, especially as this one does 'digital negatives' which my previous ones did not. One website uses the term "destroyed" for brochs such as St Mary's, however it survives to head height and many only ever had one floor so that is practically meaningless. No long flashy tower wall arc like Nettletar but several shorter broch wall sections, some exposed and some hiding behind grassy fringes. The excavation of this was one of the earliest to make a full record of the animal and plant remains. Like many "Atlantic roundhouse" settlements in Orkney the outbuildings keep to one 'side' of the broch. In this case they can be seen as winding passages between the broch tower and the main road (though stopping short of this). I was delighted to uncover a section of walling here too.
Perhaps I should have used the still camera's video capacity to additionally document the broch settlement. Anyways, the timetable took precedence. Thought about waiting at the near corner of St Mary's for the bus but continued around for the closest shelter rather than have the driver stop in a potentially difficult spot. As the shelter hoved into view the bus had already arrived. So had to make a mad dash for it - fortunately Orkney's bus drivers will wait a moment on eejits like me (usually).
Representative photos of the coastal batteries I have seen can be found on Orkney Live, to wit Skaildaquoy Point Battery http://www.orkneylive.com/members/profile/257/albums/49 , Howequoy Head Battery http://www.orkneylive.com/members/profile/257/albums/50 , Holm/Clett Batteries http://www.orkneylive.com/members/profile/257/albums/47 , Rerwick Head Battery (Tankerness in St Andrew's) http://www.orkneylive.com/members/profile/257/albums/44
For some reason the online Holm circular walks (http://www.walkorkney.co.uk/) haven't made it from the web into books. Having already done one of these (the Graemeshall one, which despite the name only has a corner there - it is best known for the Holm & Clett batteries) I decided to do the other, the two mile St Mary's circular walk. This starts off at the edge of the village heading for the Point of Skaildaquoy. I think that in the name Point of Skaildaquoy the second part is Skelderquoy 'oystercatcher field' (and indeed online the author uses both). Once over the ayre there is a new fence that the walk now has to skirt around, I could have entered the mired field but thought there should be another entrance. The old cobbled pier that juts out has a bite from the middle and the oystercatchers were all over it. The pier is consists of a bed of slabs with side walls of smaller slabs on edge. Just after here there is a space of a few yards where you are forced onto the shore - either a few feet have eroded from this place or the fence-builder has been most inconsiderate. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of white, taking this for an owl until my binoculars revealed this bird as a male nen harrier hawking the fields. He dropped down several times and the times in between I managed several shots with my camera. Of course I should have done this when first I saw the bird, but in such situations the instinctive feeling is awe and one is just content to observe.
I found no other way in to the field and so contented myself with taking photos of the military installation from the fence. Having checked again beforehand I find the Skaildaquoy Point Battery is even earlier than I thought, being shown on the 2nd 25" O.S. drawn 1900 (having not been there in 1880 when the 1st was made). NMRS record no. HY40SE 71 at HY4720200663 is described from this thusly : two mounds in an hexagonal flagstaff enclosure with two pecked lines as perhaps gun emplacements, a narrow rectangular building 15m to the E and 60m NE a square building that is likely a magazine. To this they add a later structure seen on aerial photographs ~34m ENE.
In the field there are now only two standing structures. Having found a first small bank/moundlet before coming level with the nearest building and thought to myself this must be part of the enclosure, only to find when I looked at the 1900 map that this lay on the other side of the headland. Ah, me ! The stone-built building is slant-topped with a roof of large slabs [a few days later going to Deerness I spot the small building nestling amongst the Craw Howe mounds and it looks very similar. Could it be the mysterious Craw Howe is the remains of another such battery even though the larger mound/s are covered in thick peat - close by was a WWII ack-ack and, where the houses are now, huts]. This roof has a concrete lip at the high end and along one side. There is a tall narrow window-opening of plain design at the back. On the side adjoining there is an equally plain doorway placed at the low end. At the high end another narrow window-opening has been blocked in with more of the same stones and instead there is a small square one to its right. The most interesting features are between the blocked opening and the corner. Here there are three narrow horizontal slots arranged vertically - a half-hearted attempt has been made to block these at, I'm guessing, a later date.
Not far away is a rectangular building and over at the far side of the point, by the cliff edge I see two thin wings of stone like a butterfly bun or V for Victory. It is as if a giant gave a slab a karate chop. But back to that structure. The roofless building is roughly three times length to breadth. The main body is the same stonework as the battery but its framed openings are keyed blocks of stone with inset moulding - they put me in mind of the creations (both sacred and secular) of Earl Stewart's time, expressive works of art - which to my mind rules out its being the NMRS "later structure". There is a high square window opening at one end and a full height doorway at the other. In my images I see a short metal bar at the inside of the window opening and a square hole in the inner side wall near the window. The latter's top is at the same level as the bottom of the window's lintel, which position appears to rule out my original thought that this held a large timber to support the lost roof. From Skaildaquoy Point you can see across to the WWII battery on nearby Lamb Holm and in the distance, the other side of Churchill Barrier No.1, the WWI+II battery/batteries of Holm and Clett. No reason not to suspect that this battery was re-used in the 20th century.
The rectangular building is just within the north-easterly side of the six-sided enclosure, which has unequal sides (three of which fan out to match the coastline) and is orientated not quite NE/SW. To me the enclosure is simply a jumble of low banks. But then, not knowing that this was it I did not 'have my eye in' ! This side of the headland seems to have taken the brunt of erosion because of its relative height, so it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that that I come across at the Victory sign is part of the battery itself. What I find is that the vee had been [I think] the roofing slab of a stone-lined passage under a low mound below it. My first thought is that this was another of those jobbies where a tractor has fallen through the top of a souterrain. However the stonework is nearer to that of the other buildings. Then I remember where I have seen something similar, though in that case over the passage is a concrete roof with the whole being part of what I would call a bunker, not knowing better, and it too has a low earth mound over the main body. This is in a field beside the Tradespark road. In this same field are the scant remains of the Heathery Loan WWII radio transmitter station. Though all that remains of this are scattered foundations as far as I can find out no-one has noted the 'bunker'. As I said 'getting your eye in' is king. The Holm passage's walls are mostly thin stone but there is a jumble of large stuff. There looks to be a wall, or at least blocking stones, where the cliff edge is. The inland end is probably the entrance and has squared off blocks either side. Continuing on the path I find a place reasonably safe to make my way onto the shore from and work back to the passage. From the shore a patchwork of stone definitely looks like the end wall is right at the edge - I am fairly sure of one side and the 'eye of faith' finds most of the other.
From the point the cliff lowers to the innermost part of the Bay of Sandber. Once you have bridged the Loch of Ayre's outlet you start to climb to greater heights. Almost at the cliff's edge I see what must have been a boundary stone, albeit a low one. Looking uphill I can see the start of the farmtrack headed northwards but is gated and this trail goes along the coastline instead. Ahead I see a modern stile continuing the walk. I think it's before this that there is very clear evidence of wholescale slippage in the form of an incomplete bite out of the cliff, a long arc in the grass several yards deep that the mind's eye sees falling into the sea below within the next few heavy storms. Even I decide to give this landslip a wide berth just in case ! The stile is a little too close to the edge for me after the rains we've had, and so I climb the fence more than I would normally in case the top of the stile swung me about.
I thought it wouldn't take me long to finish the walk only to find myself investigating lots of WWII archaeology, with a coastal battery not in Jeff Dorman's otherwise excellent book.
Continuing along the path I was intrigued by what looked like charcoal twigs sticking up on the skyline to my left. Going over revealed them as metal brackets in a ringed bank with a big hollow interior. At several places the bank had been cut into for small structures of concrete and corrugated iron. Though I have used the recorded names used for the wartime archaeology these have been chosen by me to give each (sub-)site a memorable identity for the reader. So this is Musie Geo light anti-aircraft gun emplacement, with lockers for the 'ammo'. RCAHMS NMRS no. HY40SE 39 lives at grid reference HY46490082. It sits beside the fence and further along a little hillock has a bank going coastward to where there is what I took for a modern hut, which I will come to in a minute. The geo itself is to the SSW. To the W of the ack-ack is a big chunk out of the high cliffs called Hesti Geo. Peering down I saw big waves crashing into the sea caves on its north side where the folds geology of narrow Clads Ber sticks out, though to me they seem to continue on the other side. The shore on the other side resembles a pavement of extremely long edgeset stones seperated from the lower part of the cliffs by a gravel 'path'. Went for a looksee at the tiny hillock and the bank but unable to fathom it out, and can find nothing on returning home either. Going back towards the hut I see nearby an arrangement of four square concrete piles with reinforcing rods pointing at the sky. Decided whilst there might as well have a closer look at that concrete block fabricated hut just in case it might be more photogenic this side. Glad I did or I would have missed out big time. There's a single door and a small window opening opposite it. At the back inside were two debris filled pits at the corners. The RH pit is larger and water-filled, and on closer inspection there is an intriguing narrow slot at the top in the wall. Each corner of the interior has a pair of thin blackened slots running from top to bottom that I feel held inner walls in place. The hut and the piles make up the Clads Ber site, HY40SE 38 at HY4645400897, which is strongly thought to be a WWII radio station with mast bases.
Whilst I have been taking my photos along comes a proper photographer and sits on a 'pile'. A resplendent male in red, white and green, rucksack on his back with his enormous overcompensating lens watching the birdies. Not the place I would have chosen to film fulmars myself. There you are perpetually looking down at them whilst on the clifftops above Taracliff Bay, for example, thare are places you can simultaneously see up and down and across !
Not much further along the path I see a concrete foundation by that fence with a long run-up. From the path a track with two deep ruts goes to that twin ramp, and I follow it, moving from side to side to avoid the swampy bits. The local sheep decide they too want their photo took, one even coming onto the ramp with me. The structure is built of large composite stone blocks. Within is a narrow rectangular hollow matching in width lines continuing the inner faces of the ramp. Nothing within. Outside the structure steps come in at an odd angle to the N wall, abut it but stop strangely short of the top. Its angle matches the drain shown on Pastmap, this coming in from the NW just as the cable trench is said to. At the NE corner a very staight drain, not depicted, from the N suddenly stops, going nowhere, and actually this would be my candidate for a trench. This site is the ramp and platform for the Howequoy Mobile Radar Unit, HY40SE35.01 at HY4646101070. From here the track ran through water-logged land. to the north a fence seperated me from an obvious military installation, so I went across for a look in case this was as near as I could get. Along the way there were large concrete foundations. Turns out these are all that is left of an accomodation camp going with the site next door.
This complex is Howequoy Battery, HY40SE 35 at HY4635101271. After photographing it from points by the fence I went up and rejoined the track, which passes by the east fence. Now I saw a way in, an 'Orkney gate'. Unfortunately this is secured by a
barbed-wire loop, an effective padlock against that super-intelligent sheep, man. Difficult to match the record to what's on the ground as parts went at various times and some descriptions seem to be duplications. 1) First mention is a couple of earth banked gun emplacements and a command control bunker, 2) command centre as concrete and earth in a tumbled mass, hut bases, decoy battery of four buildings W of command post. From outside using several viewpoints east to west I can distinguish four distinct parts,all of stone blocks and all set into banks, all but one amongst walls of the same stone blocks - i) possibly L-shaped buildings face one another ii) a couple of open-faced structures at 45-90 degrees from one another [oh, and possibly another structure by itself] iii) four open-faced structures at right angles to one another [one has pairs of smallish {?sub-}rectangular holes below the concrete top on opposing walls] iiii) a much larger rectangular structure. The last and most westerly stands out from the rest and has an outer wash/coating. Most of its apertures are now stuffed with irregular stone blocks and the uphill bank has old large wide planks and a couple of big stones where it abuts the building. I'm surely not doing the battery justice and am probably mis-reading what I see, but unless someone like the ODIN Network goes into the field to make a survey my photos will have to do as Dorman somehow missed or left it out.
The track then joins a road. I considered going on to the Westerbister road. But time was marching on and I felt I would gain no better views of the South Isles, and St Ola in the distance, than already shot by me. So my feet turned right to go to the main road. I realised that I still had time before the next bus, considered walking the main road north until the bus caught me up but simply could not resist going to the Ayre broch between the farmroad and the loch - always good to revisit places when you have a different camera, especially as this one does 'digital negatives' which my previous ones did not. One website uses the term "destroyed" for brochs such as St Mary's, however it survives to head height and many only ever had one floor so that is practically meaningless. No long flashy tower wall arc like Nettletar but several shorter broch wall sections, some exposed and some hiding behind grassy fringes. The excavation of this was one of the earliest to make a full record of the animal and plant remains. Like many "Atlantic roundhouse" settlements in Orkney the outbuildings keep to one 'side' of the broch. In this case they can be seen as winding passages between the broch tower and the main road (though stopping short of this). I was delighted to uncover a section of walling here too.
Perhaps I should have used the still camera's video capacity to additionally document the broch settlement. Anyways, the timetable took precedence. Thought about waiting at the near corner of St Mary's for the bus but continued around for the closest shelter rather than have the driver stop in a potentially difficult spot. As the shelter hoved into view the bus had already arrived. So had to make a mad dash for it - fortunately Orkney's bus drivers will wait a moment on eejits like me (usually).
Representative photos of the coastal batteries I have seen can be found on Orkney Live, to wit Skaildaquoy Point Battery http://www.orkneylive.com/members/profile/257/albums/49 , Howequoy Head Battery http://www.orkneylive.com/members/profile/257/albums/50 , Holm/Clett Batteries http://www.orkneylive.com/members/profile/257/albums/47 , Rerwick Head Battery (Tankerness in St Andrew's) http://www.orkneylive.com/members/profile/257/albums/44
Labels: ack-ack, Ayre Broch, Clads Ber, coastal battery, Heathery Loan, Howequoy, mobile radar, Musie Geo, Point of Skaildaquoy, RTS, Skaildaquoy Point Battery, Skelderquoy, St Mary's, WWII
