Orcadian landscapes

Went back to the original newspaper article, and finding out who found the cists could establish the whereabouts more precisely. In the 1850s John Delday brought some Deerness land into cultivation at what became Greentoft,.His son George found the "Milldam Farm" cist barrow in 1861 when extracting clay (one of two mounds on the summit) whilst Petrie was excavating a settlement on the hillslope. In 1869 George Delday found Bloody Quoy whilst bringing land at Greentoft into cultivation for his son-in-law. As there was a milldam behind Greentoft Farm the inevitable conclusion is that Greentoft and Milldam are one and the same, and highly likely that Bloody Quoy is the Milldam site even though this is on a false crest rather than the 'true' summit.. In 1861 during the time Petrie was digging the low hill Mr Delday found eleven cists in assorted sizes. They contained burnt bones in quantity, and outside the cists more in a couple of "crudely fashioned clay urns". One fell apart on lifting, the other being too fragile measured in situ 17" deep and 12" wide diminishing to 6", the average thickness 5/8 of an inch. Altogether the barrow held eleven cists. One near the centre, described as level with the surface, had its crude coverstone topped by a stone block some 5' by 4' by 7" thick ! The flag sides were neatly fitted together. The other cists. not as well formed, surrounded this cist but with their bottoms level with the central one's top. Petrie only saw three in the west side of the mound for himself, and his rough drawing only shows five of the total. The largest of those he saw, three foot square and about 2¼' deep, held another some one foot square which contained burnt bone. The second, adjoining cist, was narrower and the third smaller yet. Both of these also contained burnt human bone, and shingle and loose stones surrounded them both. In 1869 either side of the road is the site of Bloody Quoy ( HY50NE 6 at HY56670696, also Anglicised as Blood Field). Also called after nearby Greentoft. I think the record is a little confused about the other find - in May 1869 at Delday a G Delday found a long cist whilst ploughing, 5' long, 3'6" deep but only 1'8" wide. The heaped bones of two skeletons were found at either end. A polished granitic cushion mace-head was found here, probably on the northern side and measuring 4 5/8" long by 2¼" wide by 1¼" thick. A later farmer reported near the cist site an ~20mD cairn-like feature straddling the road included burnt earth and stone. Amongst the rough stones of which this was composed one strongly resembled a trough quern, which is another indicator of a Neolithic date. Regarding Petrie's investigations on the slope, he found building traces and vessel fragments under the soil to which he attributed a Broch Age date. More specifically he mentions a wedge-shaped stone tapering in thickness with deep notches at the thinner end, perhaps a stake he thought, of a type found either in or about brochs. Mind you, they thought Skaill to be Iron Age (or later !!) well into Childe's investigations.

Labels: Blood Field, Bloody Quoy, cists, George Delday, George Petrie, Greentoft, mace-head, Milldam

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

WARBUSTER NORTH
There is much confusion over these tumuli remnants north of Skae Frue (the antiquarian's Skeldro, probably the true Orcadian name) on the map. What appear to be three reports in the NMRS are one. Captain F.W.L. Thomas in 1851 is the earliest note of them and isn't one of those. Several bowl-barrows in an era in on a moor north of that mound with a scatter of many lumps of cramp, some incorporated in the Warbuster hill-dyke. Petrie in September 1850 excavated one and found a crude hammerstone at the back of a small kist (P.S.A.S.VII).In 1928 RCAHMS came to call (Howan Wasbuster, RCAHMS reord no. HY21SE 40) but gave bad directions - fortunately they did tell us they were the ones on the map ! A group of 6/7 mounds all under 2½' high with large quantities of cramp. Special note was taken of one some 34 foot across having a few stones of decent size about its north margin with a NW/SE aligned 20"x18" cist near the centre in which the inspector found a bit of calcined bone. Next to it was a 21'D probably natural mound but then a similar sized mound to the first also with earthfast stones about the base [like Bookan Cairn HY21SE 19 had]. The latter had signs of excavation too, as had a fine-turf covered 25'D mound some 200~300m north. In the mid-1930's J.G. Callander saw them (HY21SE 4 at HY280145) but similarly muddled up the directions, referring to the Ring of Brodgar rather than the Ring of Bookan. He refers to the notable mound as having the stones of a cist cover visible at the top and covered by cramp. By 1966 the O.S. sees a total of seven mounds 4-10mD by 0.2-0.7m high which it correctly equates with those seen by Callander. At HY28031459 they found a mound without cist. The explanation would be that Callander mistook the cist base for a cover and these fragments were lost in the intervening decades. All of which leaves one anomaly. In 1964 the farmer at Howan had levelled the field adjacent to the north three years previously but still had a 5mD 0.7m high earthen mound (also HY21SE 40) to show the O.S. (at HY27921466), though this is most likely natural anyway.

Labels: Bookan, F.W.L. Thomas, George Petrie, Howan, J.G.Callander, Wasbister, Wasbuster