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, June 26, 2011
SOUTH SANDAY AND TOLHOP June 11th 2011
Another trip left to the Fates, giving myself only enough time to reach the top of Palace Road before the Deerness bus did. As it was I had several minutes to spare. The BBC said there would be infrequent showers in the afternoon instead of which this morning there had been barely a break in the weather since I got up. Still raining when I reached the Stembister junction and for some time after. This part of St.Andrew's is called Upper Sanday (Sandi Sands are Sanday Sands originally) with Sanday here meaning south [as with ? Sandy Howes in Tankerness inland]. At least the moody atmospherics gave a few decent landscape shots when I timed them right. A lady offered me a lift but despite the rain I explained I wanted to continue walking to the stone. Saw a lovely bird on the wall of a concrete holding pen but even with one decent photo I am not sure if a warbler or a bunting, thought I had it when Springwatch showed a hen stonechat less sure when I compared with a coffee-table bird book. Basically a D-shape with long tail and fairly stubby beak, light grey head and shoulders, folded wings upper half light chestnut (top edge white) and lower half darker with some black and white, underside light sand in colour, tail white from side view, legs red. There were a few others flying in the drizzle. After I passed a farmtrack junction I looked back and saw a bloke with binoculars, presumably an ornithologist. Think I saw him again later as I waited for the bus back so not a 'twitcher'.
On reaching Stembister/Stembuster Farm you cross a millstream. A track goes to the right and looking up on the horizon there is a long metre high mound simply called the Cairn. Today bright grass hairily covers its flanks. The silhouette resembles two mounds of different heights lodged together, which shape is thought to be from its being quarried for stone. In 1964 the OS called it a mound of earth with burnt stones, though Mr Skea in 1979 told RCAHMS he had never seen any burnt material and neither did the Royal Commission when they looked. Certainly an unusual placing for a burnt mound. Having looked for myself previously and found none either I am inclined to call this a mound that had burning, possibly crematory, as distinct from a burnt mound proper.
Left the the farmtrack runs between the burn and a likely millpond. The farmyard is surprisingly small, and though I walk tight to the side the ducks and geese still run in front of me. You don't expect that of geese either, not very Roman ! There is cottagey farmhouse facing the sea. In front of that is a drying green with the standing stone over to one corner. Safety concerns in the 60's led to its being moved slightly from its former cliff-edge site with the packing stones lost during the move or a little before - fortunately the NMRS photographed the orignal placing before that time. This north-south aligned stone sits, facing the sea, a tad over six feet high and varies in width from 28" to just under half that. The best views are looking along the sides at the cliffs fore and aft. Delightful. Not having bought a return ticket I could have gone south into Holm for another look at North Cairn near Roseness ('ware the muckle Hole of The Ness going there, a mighty inland gloup). However between here and there is a steep funnel of a cliff where the path above unfairly invites you to rush down and up the other side, and it had been raining.
Decided to do photoessay on the mill (HY50SW 18) for Orkney Live. As I returned to the milldam I suddenly noticed for the first time a long thin depression running along the top of the burn bank parallel to the modern fence, and then a straight edged ridge alongside like trunking. This must be a lade like those at Tormiston and Tankerness mills. Even though the upper side of the dam is much higher than the downstream side I can't see these waters having fed the lade, more likely from the pond surviving on the opposite side of the farmtrack. The stream being low enabled me to see that on the downhill side it passed through a small built passage with lintel. Near the top of the dam is a rectangular hole two courses high on the downstream side a block high on the other (I do not know its purpose but there is one in the Sand of Wideford bridge at the height of the [present] track over it). About mid-height there is a tall passage running through the dam at the south side, also lintelled. Downstream it emerges in an unroofed channel with built walls from which the water issues onto the burn. There is the remains of a stone construction on the north side upstream. Leaned on the wall for a photo and received an electric shock (delish) from a fence I failed to spot, my ain fault. There are two large horizontal slabs that may overlie a wall (though these too big for a fieldwall) and a few more slabs and several stones in front of them - perhaps an earlier mill feature.
Fortune favoured me in that the fieldgate of the field opposite the mill itself lay open, allowing me to progress along the edge for a closer view of that. From here I could not see the concrete channel in which the iron-framed breast-shot waterwheel with its small buckets sits, only the drystone structure supporting the exposed shaft and the passage in the main building (now a storehouse) into which the shaft goes. If it weren't for the narrow grassy gap between that structure (or should I say wall ?) and the larger one uphill I would have said that they were of a piece. This structure has a staggered appearance on the downhill side, though that could be put down to deterioration. In it is a narrow lintelled rectangular opening with an angled slab floor. From the main building above a large timber projects out of the bottom of a narrower opening (the timber only occupying the bottom) in the same position. The structure is continued back until the side against the building is level with the top of the bank, which is why I think this version of the mill fed from the pond on other side of farm road. There do seem to be differing alignments in what I saw.
Thought about walking up to the mound. Rather too overgrown to video at this time. Also I saw the farmer having bother that way herding animals and didn't choose to risk making his work even harder. Just upstream of the dam twa ducks played on an islet a few metres across, though I'll wager it has been a long time since this split the burn's waters even at full spate as they're high and dry now. Perhaps this was the burnt mound, unlikely though I think it. At the top of the hill a side-branch strikes off for the isthmus seperating St.Andrew's fro Deerness. I had forgot this at the time but still went along it as the track further along that does the same would be a little damp mebbe. This is the Biggings road. On my right I noticed a farm with the intriguing name Rubiquoy - my first guess that it might be from roeberry 'red rock', my second that it might be the equivalent of Bloody Quoy, but from research in the Orkney Room rubi means simply 'depression'. Not often places in Orkney have the name dispayed where you can see it - have always pitied the poor posties. Further down greeted by a young woman coming from the buildings at Greens. Felt like saying hello, but only waved back. Here in December 1923 a Pictish symbol-stone was uncovered whilst drain-digging, by M.D. Laughton, about a foot underground a mere six yards from an outhouse corner at the north side of house. Perhaps this came from Dingy's Howe or even Castle. Greens has the same meaning as Gears down by the road, both presumably referring to the same triangle of land [that between Stembister road and the isthmus methinks].
Before this road heads to the isthmus you look down on a hammocky shaped mound, just what you expect of a broch. This 25' high circular mound is Dingyshowe (with naming variations. Also called Duncan's Height until at least 1842), first excavated in August 1860. It proved to be a broch that only stood six foot high, though with an external diameter of 57' and walls twelve foot thick that had been built directly onto a grass covered sandy hillock. Debris filled this Burg - potsherds, animal bones, a human skull, and between an edgeset slab and the wall a heap of water-worn stones like a celt workshop - and on the floor was a layer of red clay with an ash and charcoal deposit containing more animal bone. A mix of unburnt and burnt bones came from under parts of the wall. Beneath the floor evidence of a strong fire came in the form of clay and semi-vitrified sand, possibly cremation cramp. Sometime in the 1920's an amateur excavation in the south side revealed a short length of simple drystone wall/walling and a small kitchen midden, from which latter in 1929 the Royal Commission retrieved hammerstones (Petrie's celts) and degraded potsherds. The O.S. in 1964 saw several small trenches and noted shell deposits on the mound's south and west slopes. Other shell middens can be found at the remains of Peerie Howe close by and near the cliff base close to the Sandaiken site in Taracliff Bay next door (just before you reach the seps up to the new trail). In 1986 the Royal Commission paid another visit, finding a possible bank and ditch at the north and north-west but noting that this could be the result of quarrying for sand. It has been asserted that there are further levels of the broch unexcavated but six foot is all that was found. This is not a greenfield site. Beneath the floor they found clay, vitrified sand and Neolithic potsherds (Grooved Ware and rough Rinyo-Clacton), and the Royal Commision found similar pottery in the kitchen midden [Grooved Ware has been found at Evie Sands by the Broch of Gurness]. The description of a tumulus
somewhere back on a hill south of the Toab road, HY50NW 9, excavated by George Petrie in March 1850 (a 2m cutting from the east edge to the centre) might give us some idea of what preceded the broch. This conical barrow stood five feet high and thirty feet across inside a three foot wide shallow ditch. A ring of large burnt stones ran about the periphery of this clay mound. Halfway in the clay darkened and hardened. In the centre Petrie found a "considerable heap" of burnt bones and charcoal bits embedded in the clay in a three inch thick layer. He found no stones there and no tools in the barrow. Perhaps the five vanished Howies of Bossack (at the quarry that is now a tip) were similar. Petrie also dug one of the low flat-topped mounds a few feet away, of mostly large stones and measuring 22' diameter and 2' high. A foot down found a NNE/SSW short cist (2' by 18" by 1' deep) containing earth and clay with some burnt bone at the bottom, with a ?whetstone deposited outside the NNE end. Could this be the nature of the presumed dwellings between Dingishow and the Deerness shore - they have been dismissed as the results of sand quarrying but the 1798 Statistical Account specifically refers to them as "hillocks of stones".
A pity there is no suitably near high spot to look down from the other side. The top left of the 'hammock'[?N] is a peedie bit higher than the right [?S]. A linear trench comes from partway up the left [?S] diagonally up into the depressed centre. I go onto the main road to start my videoing from the northern side deosil. On the east side there is a large gouge that seems to have been done in a one-er, a likely candidate for any sand quarrying there may have been. With a magnifying glass I can make it out on the 1:25,000 eating into the outer broch area ! There are at least two tracks up the side of the mound, one of which I assume the excavators took. From the Taing of Beeman (with its double Bronze Age house) at high enough zoom you can see clear over to this broch. The broch's tower is now a big bowl providing shelter from the winds. Near the bottom of the bowl there are some stones exposed in what I think is the SE corner. Going down and coming round to the west side away from the mound there are still bumps, including a gently curved broad one alongside with that could cover an outer broch wall [in my estimation]. That diagonal trench may skirt the outer wallface of the broch tower or even be the space between it and outworks, though I would have thought Petrie would have looked for an associated settlement after being disappointed by the tower's lack of height.
Near the west side a modern track cuts deep into the earth. On the 'platform' betwen this and the mound varied stones have been made into stool sized garden features. Going up onto the older track to Turnpike a garden on the clifftop has been sub-divided by low drystane walls. If not for the colour I would have believed they came from the much reduced burnt mound showing in the cliff below. All that is left can be seen below a tyre and beneath a corrugated iron sheet - a short line of shells in red earth and a few flat stone fragments. This is known as Peerie Howe. Further along the beach there is a rough line of flat and rounded boulders in the cliff-face barely above the shore.
Now I betook me along the road towards Toab. In Sandi Sands three lines of concrete work go out into Peter's Pool, staggered half way along. These are WWII defences, HY50SW 26, made up of anti-tank blocks/pimples. They are a mix of cylinders, probably metal encased, and truncated pyramids. Beside the road there are few of the latter sitting in a grassy depression to prevent access to the road if those lines were breached. I considered wandering the shore for an easterly view of the broch settlement above St Peter's Bay, passing by Comely (cuml 'mound', the low coastal cairn directly ahint the farm perhaps) and the St Peter's Kirk Burnt Mound, but was wary of the seaweed and kept to the road. HY50SW 8 at HY53680422 lies above the shore and is a roughly circular turf-covered mound, barely reaching eighteen inches in height, with a few large stones sticking out. What it is exactly is uncertain because though RCAMS reported this as a mound of burnt stone Corrie in the same year mentions no such material.
As I continued to the Campston junction I kept taking photos and shooting videos of the two sites in the distance. There is a third, which is now supposedly a prominent grassy knoll (with a black earth patch) though I've never spotted it. Campston Burnt Mound, HY50SW 5 on the 1:25,000 at HY53420428, was only 0.8m high anyway. However this N/S aligned mound did, and presumably still does, cover an area 11 by 9 metres. The nearer site is St Peter's Kirk (Campston), showing as foot high grass-covered footings on an 18" high trapezoidal mound some 35 by 25 yards across. A 1798 reference to a roofless St Peter's Church in Deerness is actually for its parish church of St Ninian. I would suggest that this kirk was actually a private chapel attached to a Viking hall - RCAHMS put it atop a steep rise with a maximum two metre height on the north that they put down to probable settlement debris at that part. The Royal Commission in 1985 noted massive square blocks exposed along the edge in various places around the 21 by 25m enclosure edge, I could see masonry but spotted seperate blocks along or next to the furthest uphill and downhill corners. They did not find the 10 by 5m foundations to be definitively the kirk remains.
A little further away is a site not shown even on the latest map. A collection of sites under the umbrella of St Peter's Bay, record HY50SW 21 to be exact; mound, ditch, ?settlement. It was as late as 1979 that RCAHMS found a five foot high turf-covered mound measuring 16m by 18m from the top of which slab stumps protruded. Level platform traces to the south were investigated in 2001 when a section of ditch (with a likely SE entrance or other break) about the mound estimated at 6-8m wide gave an estimate for the site, likely a broch, being some 55m across. Geophysics also found anomalies outside of this area. More detailed geophysics on the mound and platform in 2006 confirmed the ditch and suggested associated banks as well as further settlement, this especially beyond the putative entrance. The resistance survey found several concentric rings, with the innermost believed to be a broch tower and the rest ditch revetment, and radar indicated a 3m deep ditch 8m wide. In between the survey dates the farmer had managed to uncover passages and walls in which he found saddle querns and decorated stones. If not for this I would have minded on that when geofizz found concentric rings on investigating the supposed broch at the end of the Ness of Brodgar this had been used to change its designation to chambered cairn.
The road to Ness of Campston is part of a crossroads, with the Stembister junction on the other side of the main road. There is an intriguing dyke on the farmroad's west side as you come up to Campston, not aligned to the fieldwalls. Moments after I passed the farmhouse a mannie came out and asked what I was doing. On explaining about photographing the two sites he found it strange to take pictures from the road, being sure that I must be about going into the fields to do so. After several repeatings he finally believed me to be content merely using the zoom to compensate, and I left this bemused landowner behind. Last time on this piece I had noticed you could only go so far before the broch mound dipped finally out of site, but somehow failed to spot the kirk. In fact the kirk stays in view for a few minutes more. Only from the farmroad can you see the uppermost corner too.
From the Ness road junction I could see all the way over past the Campston mound (along the track to Venikelday, a broch in a ringwork saith the blessed Raymond) to the Bay of Suckquoy 'muddy quoy' between Tolhop (hop=hope 'sheltered harbour') and
Sebay. On the Toab coastline before you reach the pow of Grandag ('beach above water at ebbtide' perhaps the Norn for ouse/oyce) there is a large mound covered in bushes that remains a mystery to me, unless it be connected to the extensive old saltings
hereabouts, as I have found no mention or depiction anywhere. Southwest of Holiday Cottage a larger map than the 1:25,000 (i.e. drilling down on CANMAP) shows stepping stones at HY,525,0418. Considered going to Campston Broch again. Much better to
go back to Dingieshowe and its loos though. Having gained the bay again almost thought to go on to Newark [and the Mussaquoy 'burnt mound' - another that isnae] and catch the last bus back, but health took precedence - having started off with a couple of hours of rain (predicted for the late afternoon of course) I had caught the rough end of the day had become a bit of a roaster. Back to Kirkwall in time to visit the jobshop. Phew !
--- Though it would be useful to find Petrie's 'Tob' sites his Toab road seems likely to include as far east as the Twiness junction. An 1880 find of a foot-carved block (HY50NW 22) near various mounds including Stoney Howe (Mine Howe) refers to this locale as [within the] region of Toab [analogy with the Ladykirk Stone would connect the sandstone carving to St.Ninian's Chapel]. In similar manner we now refer to his Toab road as 'the Deerness road' past 'the airport road'.
Another trip left to the Fates, giving myself only enough time to reach the top of Palace Road before the Deerness bus did. As it was I had several minutes to spare. The BBC said there would be infrequent showers in the afternoon instead of which this morning there had been barely a break in the weather since I got up. Still raining when I reached the Stembister junction and for some time after. This part of St.Andrew's is called Upper Sanday (Sandi Sands are Sanday Sands originally) with Sanday here meaning south [as with ? Sandy Howes in Tankerness inland]. At least the moody atmospherics gave a few decent landscape shots when I timed them right. A lady offered me a lift but despite the rain I explained I wanted to continue walking to the stone. Saw a lovely bird on the wall of a concrete holding pen but even with one decent photo I am not sure if a warbler or a bunting, thought I had it when Springwatch showed a hen stonechat less sure when I compared with a coffee-table bird book. Basically a D-shape with long tail and fairly stubby beak, light grey head and shoulders, folded wings upper half light chestnut (top edge white) and lower half darker with some black and white, underside light sand in colour, tail white from side view, legs red. There were a few others flying in the drizzle. After I passed a farmtrack junction I looked back and saw a bloke with binoculars, presumably an ornithologist. Think I saw him again later as I waited for the bus back so not a 'twitcher'.
On reaching Stembister/Stembuster Farm you cross a millstream. A track goes to the right and looking up on the horizon there is a long metre high mound simply called the Cairn. Today bright grass hairily covers its flanks. The silhouette resembles two mounds of different heights lodged together, which shape is thought to be from its being quarried for stone. In 1964 the OS called it a mound of earth with burnt stones, though Mr Skea in 1979 told RCAHMS he had never seen any burnt material and neither did the Royal Commission when they looked. Certainly an unusual placing for a burnt mound. Having looked for myself previously and found none either I am inclined to call this a mound that had burning, possibly crematory, as distinct from a burnt mound proper.
Left the the farmtrack runs between the burn and a likely millpond. The farmyard is surprisingly small, and though I walk tight to the side the ducks and geese still run in front of me. You don't expect that of geese either, not very Roman ! There is cottagey farmhouse facing the sea. In front of that is a drying green with the standing stone over to one corner. Safety concerns in the 60's led to its being moved slightly from its former cliff-edge site with the packing stones lost during the move or a little before - fortunately the NMRS photographed the orignal placing before that time. This north-south aligned stone sits, facing the sea, a tad over six feet high and varies in width from 28" to just under half that. The best views are looking along the sides at the cliffs fore and aft. Delightful. Not having bought a return ticket I could have gone south into Holm for another look at North Cairn near Roseness ('ware the muckle Hole of The Ness going there, a mighty inland gloup). However between here and there is a steep funnel of a cliff where the path above unfairly invites you to rush down and up the other side, and it had been raining.
Decided to do photoessay on the mill (HY50SW 18) for Orkney Live. As I returned to the milldam I suddenly noticed for the first time a long thin depression running along the top of the burn bank parallel to the modern fence, and then a straight edged ridge alongside like trunking. This must be a lade like those at Tormiston and Tankerness mills. Even though the upper side of the dam is much higher than the downstream side I can't see these waters having fed the lade, more likely from the pond surviving on the opposite side of the farmtrack. The stream being low enabled me to see that on the downhill side it passed through a small built passage with lintel. Near the top of the dam is a rectangular hole two courses high on the downstream side a block high on the other (I do not know its purpose but there is one in the Sand of Wideford bridge at the height of the [present] track over it). About mid-height there is a tall passage running through the dam at the south side, also lintelled. Downstream it emerges in an unroofed channel with built walls from which the water issues onto the burn. There is the remains of a stone construction on the north side upstream. Leaned on the wall for a photo and received an electric shock (delish) from a fence I failed to spot, my ain fault. There are two large horizontal slabs that may overlie a wall (though these too big for a fieldwall) and a few more slabs and several stones in front of them - perhaps an earlier mill feature.
Fortune favoured me in that the fieldgate of the field opposite the mill itself lay open, allowing me to progress along the edge for a closer view of that. From here I could not see the concrete channel in which the iron-framed breast-shot waterwheel with its small buckets sits, only the drystone structure supporting the exposed shaft and the passage in the main building (now a storehouse) into which the shaft goes. If it weren't for the narrow grassy gap between that structure (or should I say wall ?) and the larger one uphill I would have said that they were of a piece. This structure has a staggered appearance on the downhill side, though that could be put down to deterioration. In it is a narrow lintelled rectangular opening with an angled slab floor. From the main building above a large timber projects out of the bottom of a narrower opening (the timber only occupying the bottom) in the same position. The structure is continued back until the side against the building is level with the top of the bank, which is why I think this version of the mill fed from the pond on other side of farm road. There do seem to be differing alignments in what I saw.
Thought about walking up to the mound. Rather too overgrown to video at this time. Also I saw the farmer having bother that way herding animals and didn't choose to risk making his work even harder. Just upstream of the dam twa ducks played on an islet a few metres across, though I'll wager it has been a long time since this split the burn's waters even at full spate as they're high and dry now. Perhaps this was the burnt mound, unlikely though I think it. At the top of the hill a side-branch strikes off for the isthmus seperating St.Andrew's fro Deerness. I had forgot this at the time but still went along it as the track further along that does the same would be a little damp mebbe. This is the Biggings road. On my right I noticed a farm with the intriguing name Rubiquoy - my first guess that it might be from roeberry 'red rock', my second that it might be the equivalent of Bloody Quoy, but from research in the Orkney Room rubi means simply 'depression'. Not often places in Orkney have the name dispayed where you can see it - have always pitied the poor posties. Further down greeted by a young woman coming from the buildings at Greens. Felt like saying hello, but only waved back. Here in December 1923 a Pictish symbol-stone was uncovered whilst drain-digging, by M.D. Laughton, about a foot underground a mere six yards from an outhouse corner at the north side of house. Perhaps this came from Dingy's Howe or even Castle. Greens has the same meaning as Gears down by the road, both presumably referring to the same triangle of land [that between Stembister road and the isthmus methinks].
Before this road heads to the isthmus you look down on a hammocky shaped mound, just what you expect of a broch. This 25' high circular mound is Dingyshowe (with naming variations. Also called Duncan's Height until at least 1842), first excavated in August 1860. It proved to be a broch that only stood six foot high, though with an external diameter of 57' and walls twelve foot thick that had been built directly onto a grass covered sandy hillock. Debris filled this Burg - potsherds, animal bones, a human skull, and between an edgeset slab and the wall a heap of water-worn stones like a celt workshop - and on the floor was a layer of red clay with an ash and charcoal deposit containing more animal bone. A mix of unburnt and burnt bones came from under parts of the wall. Beneath the floor evidence of a strong fire came in the form of clay and semi-vitrified sand, possibly cremation cramp. Sometime in the 1920's an amateur excavation in the south side revealed a short length of simple drystone wall/walling and a small kitchen midden, from which latter in 1929 the Royal Commission retrieved hammerstones (Petrie's celts) and degraded potsherds. The O.S. in 1964 saw several small trenches and noted shell deposits on the mound's south and west slopes. Other shell middens can be found at the remains of Peerie Howe close by and near the cliff base close to the Sandaiken site in Taracliff Bay next door (just before you reach the seps up to the new trail). In 1986 the Royal Commission paid another visit, finding a possible bank and ditch at the north and north-west but noting that this could be the result of quarrying for sand. It has been asserted that there are further levels of the broch unexcavated but six foot is all that was found. This is not a greenfield site. Beneath the floor they found clay, vitrified sand and Neolithic potsherds (Grooved Ware and rough Rinyo-Clacton), and the Royal Commision found similar pottery in the kitchen midden [Grooved Ware has been found at Evie Sands by the Broch of Gurness]. The description of a tumulus
somewhere back on a hill south of the Toab road, HY50NW 9, excavated by George Petrie in March 1850 (a 2m cutting from the east edge to the centre) might give us some idea of what preceded the broch. This conical barrow stood five feet high and thirty feet across inside a three foot wide shallow ditch. A ring of large burnt stones ran about the periphery of this clay mound. Halfway in the clay darkened and hardened. In the centre Petrie found a "considerable heap" of burnt bones and charcoal bits embedded in the clay in a three inch thick layer. He found no stones there and no tools in the barrow. Perhaps the five vanished Howies of Bossack (at the quarry that is now a tip) were similar. Petrie also dug one of the low flat-topped mounds a few feet away, of mostly large stones and measuring 22' diameter and 2' high. A foot down found a NNE/SSW short cist (2' by 18" by 1' deep) containing earth and clay with some burnt bone at the bottom, with a ?whetstone deposited outside the NNE end. Could this be the nature of the presumed dwellings between Dingishow and the Deerness shore - they have been dismissed as the results of sand quarrying but the 1798 Statistical Account specifically refers to them as "hillocks of stones".
A pity there is no suitably near high spot to look down from the other side. The top left of the 'hammock'[?N] is a peedie bit higher than the right [?S]. A linear trench comes from partway up the left [?S] diagonally up into the depressed centre. I go onto the main road to start my videoing from the northern side deosil. On the east side there is a large gouge that seems to have been done in a one-er, a likely candidate for any sand quarrying there may have been. With a magnifying glass I can make it out on the 1:25,000 eating into the outer broch area ! There are at least two tracks up the side of the mound, one of which I assume the excavators took. From the Taing of Beeman (with its double Bronze Age house) at high enough zoom you can see clear over to this broch. The broch's tower is now a big bowl providing shelter from the winds. Near the bottom of the bowl there are some stones exposed in what I think is the SE corner. Going down and coming round to the west side away from the mound there are still bumps, including a gently curved broad one alongside with that could cover an outer broch wall [in my estimation]. That diagonal trench may skirt the outer wallface of the broch tower or even be the space between it and outworks, though I would have thought Petrie would have looked for an associated settlement after being disappointed by the tower's lack of height.
Near the west side a modern track cuts deep into the earth. On the 'platform' betwen this and the mound varied stones have been made into stool sized garden features. Going up onto the older track to Turnpike a garden on the clifftop has been sub-divided by low drystane walls. If not for the colour I would have believed they came from the much reduced burnt mound showing in the cliff below. All that is left can be seen below a tyre and beneath a corrugated iron sheet - a short line of shells in red earth and a few flat stone fragments. This is known as Peerie Howe. Further along the beach there is a rough line of flat and rounded boulders in the cliff-face barely above the shore.
Now I betook me along the road towards Toab. In Sandi Sands three lines of concrete work go out into Peter's Pool, staggered half way along. These are WWII defences, HY50SW 26, made up of anti-tank blocks/pimples. They are a mix of cylinders, probably metal encased, and truncated pyramids. Beside the road there are few of the latter sitting in a grassy depression to prevent access to the road if those lines were breached. I considered wandering the shore for an easterly view of the broch settlement above St Peter's Bay, passing by Comely (cuml 'mound', the low coastal cairn directly ahint the farm perhaps) and the St Peter's Kirk Burnt Mound, but was wary of the seaweed and kept to the road. HY50SW 8 at HY53680422 lies above the shore and is a roughly circular turf-covered mound, barely reaching eighteen inches in height, with a few large stones sticking out. What it is exactly is uncertain because though RCAMS reported this as a mound of burnt stone Corrie in the same year mentions no such material.
As I continued to the Campston junction I kept taking photos and shooting videos of the two sites in the distance. There is a third, which is now supposedly a prominent grassy knoll (with a black earth patch) though I've never spotted it. Campston Burnt Mound, HY50SW 5 on the 1:25,000 at HY53420428, was only 0.8m high anyway. However this N/S aligned mound did, and presumably still does, cover an area 11 by 9 metres. The nearer site is St Peter's Kirk (Campston), showing as foot high grass-covered footings on an 18" high trapezoidal mound some 35 by 25 yards across. A 1798 reference to a roofless St Peter's Church in Deerness is actually for its parish church of St Ninian. I would suggest that this kirk was actually a private chapel attached to a Viking hall - RCAHMS put it atop a steep rise with a maximum two metre height on the north that they put down to probable settlement debris at that part. The Royal Commission in 1985 noted massive square blocks exposed along the edge in various places around the 21 by 25m enclosure edge, I could see masonry but spotted seperate blocks along or next to the furthest uphill and downhill corners. They did not find the 10 by 5m foundations to be definitively the kirk remains.
A little further away is a site not shown even on the latest map. A collection of sites under the umbrella of St Peter's Bay, record HY50SW 21 to be exact; mound, ditch, ?settlement. It was as late as 1979 that RCAHMS found a five foot high turf-covered mound measuring 16m by 18m from the top of which slab stumps protruded. Level platform traces to the south were investigated in 2001 when a section of ditch (with a likely SE entrance or other break) about the mound estimated at 6-8m wide gave an estimate for the site, likely a broch, being some 55m across. Geophysics also found anomalies outside of this area. More detailed geophysics on the mound and platform in 2006 confirmed the ditch and suggested associated banks as well as further settlement, this especially beyond the putative entrance. The resistance survey found several concentric rings, with the innermost believed to be a broch tower and the rest ditch revetment, and radar indicated a 3m deep ditch 8m wide. In between the survey dates the farmer had managed to uncover passages and walls in which he found saddle querns and decorated stones. If not for this I would have minded on that when geofizz found concentric rings on investigating the supposed broch at the end of the Ness of Brodgar this had been used to change its designation to chambered cairn.
The road to Ness of Campston is part of a crossroads, with the Stembister junction on the other side of the main road. There is an intriguing dyke on the farmroad's west side as you come up to Campston, not aligned to the fieldwalls. Moments after I passed the farmhouse a mannie came out and asked what I was doing. On explaining about photographing the two sites he found it strange to take pictures from the road, being sure that I must be about going into the fields to do so. After several repeatings he finally believed me to be content merely using the zoom to compensate, and I left this bemused landowner behind. Last time on this piece I had noticed you could only go so far before the broch mound dipped finally out of site, but somehow failed to spot the kirk. In fact the kirk stays in view for a few minutes more. Only from the farmroad can you see the uppermost corner too.
From the Ness road junction I could see all the way over past the Campston mound (along the track to Venikelday, a broch in a ringwork saith the blessed Raymond) to the Bay of Suckquoy 'muddy quoy' between Tolhop (hop=hope 'sheltered harbour') and
Sebay. On the Toab coastline before you reach the pow of Grandag ('beach above water at ebbtide' perhaps the Norn for ouse/oyce) there is a large mound covered in bushes that remains a mystery to me, unless it be connected to the extensive old saltings
hereabouts, as I have found no mention or depiction anywhere. Southwest of Holiday Cottage a larger map than the 1:25,000 (i.e. drilling down on CANMAP) shows stepping stones at HY,525,0418. Considered going to Campston Broch again. Much better to
go back to Dingieshowe and its loos though. Having gained the bay again almost thought to go on to Newark [and the Mussaquoy 'burnt mound' - another that isnae] and catch the last bus back, but health took precedence - having started off with a couple of hours of rain (predicted for the late afternoon of course) I had caught the rough end of the day had become a bit of a roaster. Back to Kirkwall in time to visit the jobshop. Phew !
--- Though it would be useful to find Petrie's 'Tob' sites his Toab road seems likely to include as far east as the Twiness junction. An 1880 find of a foot-carved block (HY50NW 22) near various mounds including Stoney Howe (Mine Howe) refers to this locale as [within the] region of Toab [analogy with the Ladykirk Stone would connect the sandstone carving to St.Ninian's Chapel]. In similar manner we now refer to his Toab road as 'the Deerness road' past 'the airport road'.
Labels: anti-tank defences, broch, Campston, Dingieshowe, footprint, Greens, mill, Peerie Howe, Pickaquoy burnt mound, St Peter's Bay, St Peter's Kirk, standing stone, Stembister
Thursday, June 09, 2011
CAUSEWAYS CELEBRE - gae watery or no'
The NMRS now has three records for Wadale in Firth. South of the loch HY31SW 126 at HY34281329 is down as a circular enclosure. Many times I have seen it as a water-filled depression. Perhaps it is connected with the millstream that came down from
the loch then turned to run below what is now Binscarth farm in order to reach Millquoy just short of The Ouse - there are sluices very close to the enclosure, at HY3418514507 and 3424514210. At the north end of the loch HY31SW 115 at HY34221516 is attributed to nature. This projection of land into the loch on the RCAHMS photos has a perfectly circular cropmark thereon, and on the 1882 map this feature is a distinctive islet. When a local natural historian waded out in 1985 she found edge-set stones at the lochward boundary. Tradition has it as a cemetery associated with the chapel on the islet that survives at the opposite corner of the loch. Loch of Wasdale, HY31SW 8 at HY34321473, is designated as a fort with possible chapel (but the kirk was documented by Dryden, who also shows a short cist that coud pre-date it).
The O.S. in 1966 likened it to the causewayed island duns of the Hebrides, then in 1985 Orkney archaeologist Raymond Lamb compared it to the gatehouse forts of Clickhimin and Huxter (Whalsay) in Shetland because the 'apron' where causeway meets
islet resembles their 'landing stages'. Tentatively in favour of the first is that Gaelic is reported as spoken in the South Isles, rather against the second that this type of fort thought pure Zetland. These gatehouse forts are a pre-broch settlement type. The main differences between duns and brochs is that they can be oval, they are (like most forts) settlement enclosures rather than buildings, and they are more often in a position high up than brochs are. In Orkney we also have plenty of brochs that have causeways too. Finally to the mix have recently been added crannogs with causeways, such as Park Holm on the Loch of Swannay and Hourston at the north end of Harray loch (though RCAHMS thesaurus involves the use of wood to build them, highly unlikely in late prehistoric Orkney).
The Hourston site only appears on the present 1:25,000 as stepping stones but you can see circular water contours to which this goes (the similar Loch of Isbister site still has its islet above water). Without close inspection it is surely rather difficult to tell the difference between a crannog and a broch/roundhouse/fort/dun, more so when we have little accurate knowledge of the water levels at the time they were built. Which also makes me wonder how sure we are that stepping stones and causeways actually acted as 'dry' fords ? Many of Orkney's other causewayed sites are in marshy areas or places that have been. Could they have had another or additional purpose - if there had been enough wood to build them with would we be talking of the possibility of their being used for making ritual deposits from ? Besides disappearing underwater might some causeways have simply gone underground, so that they much commoner in Orkney than presently thought. Also might the known dry causeways to brochs be an imitation of earlier watery sites ?
In the Loch of Swannay as well as the "causewayed crannog" of Park Holm we have the wadable possible crannog of Stoney Holm and the large islet of Muckle Holm (assumed to be natural). At the Voy end of the Loch of Stenness there is a causewayed crannog and a burnt mound, and The Ness has been suspiciously marshy. Down at Kirbister loch in Orphir there is the causewayed site of the Holm of Groundwater as well as the Holm of Westquoy. The now sunken causeway was until recent times rebuilt for fishing at times of low water levels but could have a natural base just as some of Orcadian ayres were maintained by the hand of man. I also wonder if any causeways exist as sites by themselves. The stepping stones of the Burn of Crantit near Nether Scapa would be too low for a ford now and there is no sign of an overground structure it might have led to [unless the Vikings buried this in one of the events where man pushed back the Bay of Scapa, where in Mesolithic times was a loch below Hillhead).
The NMRS now has three records for Wadale in Firth. South of the loch HY31SW 126 at HY34281329 is down as a circular enclosure. Many times I have seen it as a water-filled depression. Perhaps it is connected with the millstream that came down from
the loch then turned to run below what is now Binscarth farm in order to reach Millquoy just short of The Ouse - there are sluices very close to the enclosure, at HY3418514507 and 3424514210. At the north end of the loch HY31SW 115 at HY34221516 is attributed to nature. This projection of land into the loch on the RCAHMS photos has a perfectly circular cropmark thereon, and on the 1882 map this feature is a distinctive islet. When a local natural historian waded out in 1985 she found edge-set stones at the lochward boundary. Tradition has it as a cemetery associated with the chapel on the islet that survives at the opposite corner of the loch. Loch of Wasdale, HY31SW 8 at HY34321473, is designated as a fort with possible chapel (but the kirk was documented by Dryden, who also shows a short cist that coud pre-date it).
The O.S. in 1966 likened it to the causewayed island duns of the Hebrides, then in 1985 Orkney archaeologist Raymond Lamb compared it to the gatehouse forts of Clickhimin and Huxter (Whalsay) in Shetland because the 'apron' where causeway meets
islet resembles their 'landing stages'. Tentatively in favour of the first is that Gaelic is reported as spoken in the South Isles, rather against the second that this type of fort thought pure Zetland. These gatehouse forts are a pre-broch settlement type. The main differences between duns and brochs is that they can be oval, they are (like most forts) settlement enclosures rather than buildings, and they are more often in a position high up than brochs are. In Orkney we also have plenty of brochs that have causeways too. Finally to the mix have recently been added crannogs with causeways, such as Park Holm on the Loch of Swannay and Hourston at the north end of Harray loch (though RCAHMS thesaurus involves the use of wood to build them, highly unlikely in late prehistoric Orkney).
The Hourston site only appears on the present 1:25,000 as stepping stones but you can see circular water contours to which this goes (the similar Loch of Isbister site still has its islet above water). Without close inspection it is surely rather difficult to tell the difference between a crannog and a broch/roundhouse/fort/dun, more so when we have little accurate knowledge of the water levels at the time they were built. Which also makes me wonder how sure we are that stepping stones and causeways actually acted as 'dry' fords ? Many of Orkney's other causewayed sites are in marshy areas or places that have been. Could they have had another or additional purpose - if there had been enough wood to build them with would we be talking of the possibility of their being used for making ritual deposits from ? Besides disappearing underwater might some causeways have simply gone underground, so that they much commoner in Orkney than presently thought. Also might the known dry causeways to brochs be an imitation of earlier watery sites ?
In the Loch of Swannay as well as the "causewayed crannog" of Park Holm we have the wadable possible crannog of Stoney Holm and the large islet of Muckle Holm (assumed to be natural). At the Voy end of the Loch of Stenness there is a causewayed crannog and a burnt mound, and The Ness has been suspiciously marshy. Down at Kirbister loch in Orphir there is the causewayed site of the Holm of Groundwater as well as the Holm of Westquoy. The now sunken causeway was until recent times rebuilt for fishing at times of low water levels but could have a natural base just as some of Orcadian ayres were maintained by the hand of man. I also wonder if any causeways exist as sites by themselves. The stepping stones of the Burn of Crantit near Nether Scapa would be too low for a ford now and there is no sign of an overground structure it might have led to [unless the Vikings buried this in one of the events where man pushed back the Bay of Scapa, where in Mesolithic times was a loch below Hillhead).
Labels: broch, causeway, gateway fort, Holm of Groundwater, Hourston crannog, Loch of Isbister, Loch of Kirbister, Loch of Swannay, Loch of Wasdale, Park Holm, Stoney Holm, Voy
Saturday, May 14, 2011
COMMENTS ON GLAITNESS (KIRKWALL) FIELD TRIP
http://class7glaitness10.blogspot.com/2011/05/hatston-field-trip.html gives a better location for the broch - the RBS bank. Macgillivray believed there were other brochs around what is now Kirkwall, with vanished Munt (later Cromwell's Fort) and the Peedie Munt (nearby) the likelier candidates with Dunkirk a further possible ["The Orcadian" 18/8/1986].
Actually there were two rock art 'panels' at the Pickaquoy burnt mount, but we only know the fate of one. To my mind their presence indicates that there was once a tomb on this side of Wideford Hill (the RA would have come from something earlier than the burnt mound in any case). I am surprised that they didn't go to the new Hatston pier with the Saverock burnt mound off its road to your left going down showing the burnt material in several exposures.
The line of the old airfield runway is now a broad farm track. When they constructed the airfield they found not only the Hatston Airfield earthhouse but a second underground site that was not investigated ["The Orkney Herald" 12/7/39]. Of course we also have two at Grain, a second one being excavated in recent times, and two at Midhouse in Evie. A pattern maybe to look for at other Orcadian locations (there was one in what is now a triangular field close to the new pier, thought by Petrie to have been part of a broch) ?
Once or twice small fragments of the Pickaquoy St Duthac Church have been found. Indeed I saw a building fragment myself by the fence near the houses,but forgot to photograph it and next time it looked to be gone ! There is supposed to be another dedication in St Ola to this saint, on the way to the Head of Holland, but the formation Kirk Doo rules this out. More likely is the doo=dove as symbol of either Mary or the Holy Ghost or [IIRC] Mother Church.
http://class7glaitness10.blogspot.com/2011/05/hatston-field-trip.html gives a better location for the broch - the RBS bank. Macgillivray believed there were other brochs around what is now Kirkwall, with vanished Munt (later Cromwell's Fort) and the Peedie Munt (nearby) the likelier candidates with Dunkirk a further possible ["The Orcadian" 18/8/1986].
Actually there were two rock art 'panels' at the Pickaquoy burnt mount, but we only know the fate of one. To my mind their presence indicates that there was once a tomb on this side of Wideford Hill (the RA would have come from something earlier than the burnt mound in any case). I am surprised that they didn't go to the new Hatston pier with the Saverock burnt mound off its road to your left going down showing the burnt material in several exposures.
The line of the old airfield runway is now a broad farm track. When they constructed the airfield they found not only the Hatston Airfield earthhouse but a second underground site that was not investigated ["The Orkney Herald" 12/7/39]. Of course we also have two at Grain, a second one being excavated in recent times, and two at Midhouse in Evie. A pattern maybe to look for at other Orcadian locations (there was one in what is now a triangular field close to the new pier, thought by Petrie to have been part of a broch) ?
Once or twice small fragments of the Pickaquoy St Duthac Church have been found. Indeed I saw a building fragment myself by the fence near the houses,but forgot to photograph it and next time it looked to be gone ! There is supposed to be another dedication in St Ola to this saint, on the way to the Head of Holland, but the formation Kirk Doo rules this out. More likely is the doo=dove as symbol of either Mary or the Holy Ghost or [IIRC] Mother Church.
Labels: broch, Cromwell's Fort, Doo Kirk, earthhouse, Hatston Airfield, Lower Mithouse, Midhouse, Munt, Peedie Munt, Pickaquoy burnt mound, Saverock burnt mound, souterrain, St Duthac Chapel
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
ELLIAR HOLM, SHAPINSAY
Jo Ben called Helliar Holm by the name Eleorholm and it has been known by several variations of these, such as Ellyar Holm and Elhardholm. The intrusive modern haitch is from some outsider thinking this comes from halye 'flat rock' but it is named after the same person as Elwick over the way on Shapinsay itself. The personal name is thought to be something along the lines of Ellend/Elland, but I myself wonder about Erlend. Though it is said you can still walk from Shapinsay to Helliar Holm at low tide you would need to know the local tides well. Though it is accessible by boat this is now a reserve, and permission should be sought.
On the 1882 25" O.S. several structures are shown to the NW above the cliffs between Whitstanes and the north pier. The largest appears on the 6" too, but not on its modern replacement (this is the unroofed structure HY41NE 42 at HY48231581) despite being still visible. Between it and the lochan is a structure the same length but narrower (this is a perfect ellipse on the 25" but very irregular, even vaguely rectangular, on the 6"). Then east of the lochan, south of the pier, are two slightly smaller structures. The 25" shows (west to east) an ellipse and a rectangle like Whitestanes. This last has sides more nearly equal, and indeed is shown outright square on the 6". They are all within easy walk of the chalybeate well where the pumphouse is now. Jo Ben mentions drelict house-tofts and rigs as well as the chapel. There is a dike running between the [areas of] the two piers which takes on a more noticeable curve near these sites. Perhaps it is this dyke that led Countrywoman to mention that there had been a monastery on Helliar Holm. On the opposite side of the holm there is a low cairn against the storm-beach. South of this is a sheepfold and the traditional site of the chapel - Kirk Geo is offshore. Here there is now only rough grass, and some believe that the chapel remains are the Broch Age structure close by (the 'fort' a possible broch now generalised to some kind of round house). However it has been suggested that this had been turned into the sheepfold (such as happened to one of the Buckquoy sites in Birsay), which sits on a rise. Or it is simply too thoroughly overgrown. Helliar Holm's southern tip is called Saeva Ness. As Saevar means sea-mound was there once one here, long gone before even the time of Jo Ben, a howe [at the head of the Geo of Saevaness perhaps]. Could it even be that when the Vikings first came to Orkney this islet had a more permanent connection to Shapinsay and that they applied the name Saevar Ness, for the surviving chambered cairn, to what we now call Helliar Holm ? Makes sense to me.
The storm-beach cairn, NMRS record no. HY41NE 23 at HY48541588, is a NW/SE oriented not-quite rectangular structure below the later remains of a kelp-stance. It is some 5m by 3.5m and includes earthfast orthostats. Inland the visible wall thickness is 0.4 metres.
About a hectare is enclosed by the dyke, HY41NE 22, which starts on the shoreline at HY48591578 on a hillside south of a 'drain', then follows a while before coming east and then south before finally turning south-west to meet the north shoreline at
HY48171527. All in all a one hectare space is enclosed. It starts off as a number of sub-peat dykes between parallel edge slabs (these occasionally crossed to give a cist-like feel), then on leaving the drain behind it is covered by turf. Raymond Lamb compares it to a sub-peat dyke on the Mouckle Hill of Linkataing in Eday, which also encloses a roundhouse and a chambered cairn but is now seen as part of a prehistoric field system.
No dedication is known for the chapel, HY41NE 3 at HY48141539, which is recorded as Kirk Goe [a variant of geo]. Could it have been lost to the sea like many another coastal site ? Its linking by some with the ?broch arises from the latter's upright slabs being taken for gravestones (I am minded of the Covenanter's Graves opposite The Brough on the north-east side of Tankereness).
The possible broch near the traditional chapel site is thought too slight to be a proper broch. Locals termed it a fort (not a brough/broch), and indeed one suggestion is that this is a blockhouse (with dwelling), one of the earliest forms of fortified gun emplacement (similarly North Taing outside Kirkwall is reported by the farmer to have been used as a Great War gun emplacement). The other suggestion is that this is a 'semi-broch', which has also been said of North Taing on the nearby Head of Holland [the fields here are full of small stones, but as you near this site you start to come across much larger ones either side of the fence opposite]. This problematic label has been applied to several problematic sites where the visible remains have the shape of a semi-circle or circle segment. However I agree with Dave Lynn that there is no such animal, that these are all incomplete or badly eroded brochs or other roundhouses. To show what can happen to our ideas of what a site was, Riggan of Kami on the east coast of Deerness was first thought a blockhouse and then a 'semi-broch' after partial excavation revealed the remains of a ground-galleried broch. You truly can never make a conclusive identification until you've done the spadework. HY41NE 1 at HY48591579 survives on the landward side under tumble as a two-foot-six high NW arc about ten feet long, indicating an interior roughly twenty-six feet across in which some edge-set slabs project up to 18" (there appears to have been erosion since 1972 as in 1986 these are numerous). The outer face, of a likely 9'6" thick wall, survives best. A yard from the inner face a stabilising wall ends on the north with what is either the corbelled end of a cell or part of an entrance passage. Kitchen midden traces were seen in 1928 but have not been observed since.
Apart from the lighthouse and its [over?] large enclosure the most obvious feature is the tall marker cairn at the highest part of the holm in the SE, sitting on top of a chambered mound. This cairn of large stones, HY41NE 2 at HY48431534, is over an area 66' by 60' and is some 8' high. It covers a NW/SE aligned tomb of Orkney-Cromarty type, resembling Hill of Shebster (ND06SW 5), on its south side and an arc of possible revetment about four foot long is just visible on the east side. Rubble covers this stalled tomb's entrance and where the back slab should be, but the rest of the slabs project above the rubble for 40cm in a central depression. Visible are three-and-a-half pairs of slabs 1.7m apart and a 40cm passage runs between the pairs. Henshall reports the possibilty in the most easterly comparment's south side of the top of drystane walling.
Jo Ben called Helliar Holm by the name Eleorholm and it has been known by several variations of these, such as Ellyar Holm and Elhardholm. The intrusive modern haitch is from some outsider thinking this comes from halye 'flat rock' but it is named after the same person as Elwick over the way on Shapinsay itself. The personal name is thought to be something along the lines of Ellend/Elland, but I myself wonder about Erlend. Though it is said you can still walk from Shapinsay to Helliar Holm at low tide you would need to know the local tides well. Though it is accessible by boat this is now a reserve, and permission should be sought.
On the 1882 25" O.S. several structures are shown to the NW above the cliffs between Whitstanes and the north pier. The largest appears on the 6" too, but not on its modern replacement (this is the unroofed structure HY41NE 42 at HY48231581) despite being still visible. Between it and the lochan is a structure the same length but narrower (this is a perfect ellipse on the 25" but very irregular, even vaguely rectangular, on the 6"). Then east of the lochan, south of the pier, are two slightly smaller structures. The 25" shows (west to east) an ellipse and a rectangle like Whitestanes. This last has sides more nearly equal, and indeed is shown outright square on the 6". They are all within easy walk of the chalybeate well where the pumphouse is now. Jo Ben mentions drelict house-tofts and rigs as well as the chapel. There is a dike running between the [areas of] the two piers which takes on a more noticeable curve near these sites. Perhaps it is this dyke that led Countrywoman to mention that there had been a monastery on Helliar Holm. On the opposite side of the holm there is a low cairn against the storm-beach. South of this is a sheepfold and the traditional site of the chapel - Kirk Geo is offshore. Here there is now only rough grass, and some believe that the chapel remains are the Broch Age structure close by (the 'fort' a possible broch now generalised to some kind of round house). However it has been suggested that this had been turned into the sheepfold (such as happened to one of the Buckquoy sites in Birsay), which sits on a rise. Or it is simply too thoroughly overgrown. Helliar Holm's southern tip is called Saeva Ness. As Saevar means sea-mound was there once one here, long gone before even the time of Jo Ben, a howe [at the head of the Geo of Saevaness perhaps]. Could it even be that when the Vikings first came to Orkney this islet had a more permanent connection to Shapinsay and that they applied the name Saevar Ness, for the surviving chambered cairn, to what we now call Helliar Holm ? Makes sense to me.
The storm-beach cairn, NMRS record no. HY41NE 23 at HY48541588, is a NW/SE oriented not-quite rectangular structure below the later remains of a kelp-stance. It is some 5m by 3.5m and includes earthfast orthostats. Inland the visible wall thickness is 0.4 metres.
About a hectare is enclosed by the dyke, HY41NE 22, which starts on the shoreline at HY48591578 on a hillside south of a 'drain', then follows a while before coming east and then south before finally turning south-west to meet the north shoreline at
HY48171527. All in all a one hectare space is enclosed. It starts off as a number of sub-peat dykes between parallel edge slabs (these occasionally crossed to give a cist-like feel), then on leaving the drain behind it is covered by turf. Raymond Lamb compares it to a sub-peat dyke on the Mouckle Hill of Linkataing in Eday, which also encloses a roundhouse and a chambered cairn but is now seen as part of a prehistoric field system.
No dedication is known for the chapel, HY41NE 3 at HY48141539, which is recorded as Kirk Goe [a variant of geo]. Could it have been lost to the sea like many another coastal site ? Its linking by some with the ?broch arises from the latter's upright slabs being taken for gravestones (I am minded of the Covenanter's Graves opposite The Brough on the north-east side of Tankereness).
The possible broch near the traditional chapel site is thought too slight to be a proper broch. Locals termed it a fort (not a brough/broch), and indeed one suggestion is that this is a blockhouse (with dwelling), one of the earliest forms of fortified gun emplacement (similarly North Taing outside Kirkwall is reported by the farmer to have been used as a Great War gun emplacement). The other suggestion is that this is a 'semi-broch', which has also been said of North Taing on the nearby Head of Holland [the fields here are full of small stones, but as you near this site you start to come across much larger ones either side of the fence opposite]. This problematic label has been applied to several problematic sites where the visible remains have the shape of a semi-circle or circle segment. However I agree with Dave Lynn that there is no such animal, that these are all incomplete or badly eroded brochs or other roundhouses. To show what can happen to our ideas of what a site was, Riggan of Kami on the east coast of Deerness was first thought a blockhouse and then a 'semi-broch' after partial excavation revealed the remains of a ground-galleried broch. You truly can never make a conclusive identification until you've done the spadework. HY41NE 1 at HY48591579 survives on the landward side under tumble as a two-foot-six high NW arc about ten feet long, indicating an interior roughly twenty-six feet across in which some edge-set slabs project up to 18" (there appears to have been erosion since 1972 as in 1986 these are numerous). The outer face, of a likely 9'6" thick wall, survives best. A yard from the inner face a stabilising wall ends on the north with what is either the corbelled end of a cell or part of an entrance passage. Kitchen midden traces were seen in 1928 but have not been observed since.
Apart from the lighthouse and its [over?] large enclosure the most obvious feature is the tall marker cairn at the highest part of the holm in the SE, sitting on top of a chambered mound. This cairn of large stones, HY41NE 2 at HY48431534, is over an area 66' by 60' and is some 8' high. It covers a NW/SE aligned tomb of Orkney-Cromarty type, resembling Hill of Shebster (ND06SW 5), on its south side and an arc of possible revetment about four foot long is just visible on the east side. Rubble covers this stalled tomb's entrance and where the back slab should be, but the rest of the slabs project above the rubble for 40cm in a central depression. Visible are three-and-a-half pairs of slabs 1.7m apart and a 40cm passage runs between the pairs. Henshall reports the possibilty in the most easterly comparment's south side of the top of drystane walling.
Labels: broch, chambered tomb, Eleorholm, Elhardholm, Elliar Holm, Ellyar Holm, Helliar Holm, Whitestanes
Friday, April 15, 2011
DAMSAY CONJECTURES
On PASTMAP only one Damsay site is indicated. So I was surprised on doing a search on Damsay through RCAHMS that nine came up ! A linked map displayed them. These additions are mostly from a field and desk-based survey. At the west end of the island the survey found three possible sites. South to north these are a possible mound and cist (HY38761370, NMRS record HY31SE 75) an enclosure (HY38781385, HY31SE 76) and a possible prehistoric settlement (HY38781393 , HY31SE 74). Offshore is a possible fish trap (HY31SE 82), though I would see fish traps in features near near Eves Howe in Deerness before I would this. The ?feature is at HY39411390 and a possible prehistoric barrow or mound (HY39141380 HY31SE 78) isn't very far away, being just above the M of MHWS on the 1:25,000. Those who say that Clouston's possible castle is a broch site say the castle site would be more central, placing it somewhere north of this ?barrow. A pity we have no details on any of these sites, like size or appearance. Another site type found was rig-and-furrow. The official grid reference for HY31SE 83 is HY39011406 but the aerial view show several 'fields' on the northern side of Damsay that leave a large and suspiciously blank space between them and the ?barrow. The castle would be expected on the high point here (actually, to my mind, the space is large enough for this and other structures) but the survey threw up nothing. Of coure there is precedent for defensive structures to be completely removed, but I wonder if the surveyor actually walked onto this high point - I know from personal experience how even on the slightest knoll stones may not be apparent until you are right on top of them. In the 14thC there was both a castali and a skali on Damsay (in Orkney skali is translated as 'hall').
There are presently three bodies of water in the eastern half. However on the 1849 commonty plan of Firth [a large fragile map in the Orkney Archive, shewing Rennibister as Bull] only the main one appears - the other two are marshy areas on the 1882 25" O.S. This is in the north-east corner and its northern end seperates the St Mary's Chapel site from the putative broch. This lochan has a suspiciously straight western edge, making it resemble that at Ferry Point on the nearby mainland (used to land peats until an incoming owner of Quanterness stuck his oar in). I suspect this is the result of late 19thC landscaping, otherwise... (I have seen mediaeval or prehistoric furrows in a roadside field beside the track to Ferry Point, and seeing my photo Anne Brundle did not disagree). Recent underwater archaeology found a likely burial ground offshore.Once upon a time there was a causeway from the Point of Damsay north-west all the way across to the Skerries of Coubister in mainland Firth. A few years ago during an
exceptional low tide a man donned waders and made the full journey (there is a narrow channel that allows boats passage). Perhaps the end of the causeway is referred to in an alternative translation of a tradition related by Jo Ben "They say that sometimes ridges of hills are taken away and in the space of an hour restored again".
Anyhoo, St Mary's Chapel (HY31SE 21 at HY38951422) only exhibits an 8" high portion of drystane wall under six foot long, as has been the case since at least 1848. Its turf-covered mound is fourteen by seven metres and four foot high. Many early mediaeval chapels started out as private chapels belonging to a hall owner. Warebeth chapel is strongly associated with Munkerhouse and so surely the putatitive broch site on Damsay is [also] where the monasterium was (technically a nunnery is a foundation with a female head, so a man must have been in charge here). Storer Clouston found no evidence for the 12thC castle save "a very possible site of a small rectangular tower... the sea on one side and a steep bank on a second" unconnected with a drystone dyke there. Similarly John Fraser thought a small mound at the NE point of the island was connected with the castle. Presumably this is not the same as the chapel mound and is referred to an enclosure where I would put the monastery and thought a possible broch to boot - castle HY31SE 25, ?broch and mediaeval settlement HY31SE at HY39031460.
Amongst all this what isn't mentioned is the standing buildings there, including the (unroofed) two-storey house so evident to the eye. Could be they are subsumed under 'mediaeval settlement' I suppose. The big hoose had windows and I am torn between a construction date from the great Orkney-wide building expansion of the 17thC (loke Breckness) and the much later period of mansion house building (Like Garson). It could even be on the site of an older structure. It is close to the shore and what seems to be the remains of a one-storey extension could be a boathouse. Or maybe a walled garden. Difficult to tell from the shore even after seeing it with a zoom lens from several different directions. Which is why (I guess) a field survey should survey everything, including what others have done
before. The building, or is it a pair of buildings, abut the division of two fields/precincts/?. These 'precincts' division is the longest edge. The western one is bounded by a stone dyke but not apparently the eastern one where the possible broch site is located, though it still stands out clearly. No boats to Damsay unfortunately.
The commonty plan shows no lochan at Ferry Point
Labels: broch, castle, Damsay, monasterium, nunnery
St Lawrence's Church in Southtown on Burray
Where the A961 leaves Burray Village heading east, where it turns to the last of the Churchill Barriers instead carry across to the road marked for the cemetery and Ness. Upon reaching Leith the cemetery road goes down directly by Leith's east side. The kirk was built in 1621, about the same time as the nearby Bow of Burray was rebuilt. In some ways it resembles Breckness P(a)lace in Stromness, if not quite so grand. I had been expecting to find foundations at most but it is mostly upstanding, if unroofed. But what most surprised me is that despite a lack of megalithic stonework this is most definitely a broch site. The church sits where the tower was, though I'm unsure whether it is centred or to the edge. It sits above the rest of the kirkyard as there is a two foot deep rectangular cut through the mound. The old wall at the east end looks deeper and a little different in character. The outer broch would appear to finish at this side as looking over the cemetery extension it just goes down to the low cliff - the broch surrounds the kirkyard on the north and west over to the path to the shore. When you think the stones must have been removed before ever (the present) kirk was built the landowners have kept it rather well preserved. It has elements reminding me of three other chapel brochs; the old Holm parish church and Warebeth in Stromness and Overbrough in Harray.
When the Bu Sands scheme was agreed in 1995 the OIC’s planning director said it was likely that St Lawrence church stood on an extensive site belonging to a Norse ‘magnate’. This goes well with my opinion that this ecclesiastical site began as a private chapel attached to a Viking hall [like ? the alleged St Peter’s Kirk near St Peter’s Pool in Toab] and explains why the kirk is at the edge of the broch or broch tower site.
Where the A961 leaves Burray Village heading east, where it turns to the last of the Churchill Barriers instead carry across to the road marked for the cemetery and Ness. Upon reaching Leith the cemetery road goes down directly by Leith's east side. The kirk was built in 1621, about the same time as the nearby Bow of Burray was rebuilt. In some ways it resembles Breckness P(a)lace in Stromness, if not quite so grand. I had been expecting to find foundations at most but it is mostly upstanding, if unroofed. But what most surprised me is that despite a lack of megalithic stonework this is most definitely a broch site. The church sits where the tower was, though I'm unsure whether it is centred or to the edge. It sits above the rest of the kirkyard as there is a two foot deep rectangular cut through the mound. The old wall at the east end looks deeper and a little different in character. The outer broch would appear to finish at this side as looking over the cemetery extension it just goes down to the low cliff - the broch surrounds the kirkyard on the north and west over to the path to the shore. When you think the stones must have been removed before ever (the present) kirk was built the landowners have kept it rather well preserved. It has elements reminding me of three other chapel brochs; the old Holm parish church and Warebeth in Stromness and Overbrough in Harray.
When the Bu Sands scheme was agreed in 1995 the OIC’s planning director said it was likely that St Lawrence church stood on an extensive site belonging to a Norse ‘magnate’. This goes well with my opinion that this ecclesiastical site began as a private chapel attached to a Viking hall [like ? the alleged St Peter’s Kirk near St Peter’s Pool in Toab] and explains why the kirk is at the edge of the broch or broch tower site.
Labels: broch, Burray, Southtown, St Lawrence Church
Sunday, December 23, 2007
WEST BROCH OF BURGAR
NMRS record no. HY32NW 15 at HY34822782 is a 54' diameter mound of maximum height of 6'3" fat the SE, with a flat central hollow 2-5' high about the periphery and 37' from crest to crest of this ridge. The cairn's composition is reported as substantial flat stones of a very friable nature, rather than purposefully thin slabs as once thought. Davidson and Henshall's measurements give the cairn a definite edge enclosing an area 17.5m across with maximum height of 1.9m max. at the SE. This diameter being over a metre greater than previously reported either the groundplan is oblate or there has been additional spread, which latter would rule out the edge's certainty to my way of thinking. Of course the site is on the ground is more complicated than than the diagrammatic plans show, and the main elements given aren't necesarily representative of what were once the main components given the amount lost to 'quarrying'.
The presently exposed chamber as described by Davidson and Henshall consists of compartments 1.8 and 2m long. Their Orkney volume adds another section at the northern end where what was once seen as possibly an angled wall face, but which they think is simply exposed cairn material, blocks the chamber where they believe the axial passage had once been. As described by them this NE/SW chamber consists front to back of :-
Slab pair (outer) are 0.65m apart 20cm thick, projecting 0.2 & 0.5m, with the first the only slab not 0.6m wide. Slab pair (inner) 0.6m higher up are 0.55m apart (1935 1'4" from a different place ?) 5 cm thick, projecting 0.8m but apparently once taller - that at the SE presently has its top level with the surviving mound top. The barely projecting back slab is 10cm thick and 0.2m above the outer pair. The two edgeset slabs a yard east of the chamber, aligned N/S but presumed displaced from the chamber itself, with (perhaps) another stone had once been deemed as possible evidence for an Unstan-style side entry. These thick slabs of four and six feet in length are, however, distinctly out of proportion with other elements of the chamber. And so tight is their contact that they look to be the top of one giant orthostat (standing stone ??) that has split vertically down a cleavage plane. I suspect these and some of the site's larg slabs came from the burnside going by the exposed stone still in situ.
Could this site be 'domestic' rather than sepulchral ? Once this was thought to be a broch, called the West Broch of Burgar in reference to a supposed pairing with the present Broch of Burgar analogous to that of the Burray brochs - on the first O.S. maps they were both more simply labelled broughs. Some years before 1928 the site was quarried at the NW for use as farm buildings material - like the Knowe of Midgarth the locals reported it as containing 'sailor's graves' [could it be that the treasure hoard came from the chambered mound rather than the other brough, as it would have been a good ploy for the suspicious farmer to mislead treasure seekers by saying it came from the other place]. On the early maps a thick-walled square structure labelled Castle is shown a little west of the mound (the Castle legend is displaced offshore on modern maps when shown at all). This is within the same modern fence lines as the mound, just east of it on the other side of the field wall. The long cairn on the Head of Work also has a castle at the cliff-edge nearby, though what can be seen at that location nowadays is essentially natural in my opinion.
NMRS record no. HY32NW 15 at HY34822782 is a 54' diameter mound of maximum height of 6'3" fat the SE, with a flat central hollow 2-5' high about the periphery and 37' from crest to crest of this ridge. The cairn's composition is reported as substantial flat stones of a very friable nature, rather than purposefully thin slabs as once thought. Davidson and Henshall's measurements give the cairn a definite edge enclosing an area 17.5m across with maximum height of 1.9m max. at the SE. This diameter being over a metre greater than previously reported either the groundplan is oblate or there has been additional spread, which latter would rule out the edge's certainty to my way of thinking. Of course the site is on the ground is more complicated than than the diagrammatic plans show, and the main elements given aren't necesarily representative of what were once the main components given the amount lost to 'quarrying'.
The presently exposed chamber as described by Davidson and Henshall consists of compartments 1.8 and 2m long. Their Orkney volume adds another section at the northern end where what was once seen as possibly an angled wall face, but which they think is simply exposed cairn material, blocks the chamber where they believe the axial passage had once been. As described by them this NE/SW chamber consists front to back of :-
Slab pair (outer) are 0.65m apart 20cm thick, projecting 0.2 & 0.5m, with the first the only slab not 0.6m wide. Slab pair (inner) 0.6m higher up are 0.55m apart (1935 1'4" from a different place ?) 5 cm thick, projecting 0.8m but apparently once taller - that at the SE presently has its top level with the surviving mound top. The barely projecting back slab is 10cm thick and 0.2m above the outer pair. The two edgeset slabs a yard east of the chamber, aligned N/S but presumed displaced from the chamber itself, with (perhaps) another stone had once been deemed as possible evidence for an Unstan-style side entry. These thick slabs of four and six feet in length are, however, distinctly out of proportion with other elements of the chamber. And so tight is their contact that they look to be the top of one giant orthostat (standing stone ??) that has split vertically down a cleavage plane. I suspect these and some of the site's larg slabs came from the burnside going by the exposed stone still in situ.
Could this site be 'domestic' rather than sepulchral ? Once this was thought to be a broch, called the West Broch of Burgar in reference to a supposed pairing with the present Broch of Burgar analogous to that of the Burray brochs - on the first O.S. maps they were both more simply labelled broughs. Some years before 1928 the site was quarried at the NW for use as farm buildings material - like the Knowe of Midgarth the locals reported it as containing 'sailor's graves' [could it be that the treasure hoard came from the chambered mound rather than the other brough, as it would have been a good ploy for the suspicious farmer to mislead treasure seekers by saying it came from the other place]. On the early maps a thick-walled square structure labelled Castle is shown a little west of the mound (the Castle legend is displaced offshore on modern maps when shown at all). This is within the same modern fence lines as the mound, just east of it on the other side of the field wall. The long cairn on the Head of Work also has a castle at the cliff-edge nearby, though what can be seen at that location nowadays is essentially natural in my opinion.
Labels: broch, Burgar, cairn, castle, chambered
