A small group from the Ardnamurchan History & Heritage Association spent last Saturday afternoon this archaeologically rich area, to the east of the road from Kilchoan to Achnaha where it crosses the
Allt Uamha na Muice. As can be seen from this satellite image (courtesy
Bing) the area has been extensively worked agriculturally, with areas of lazy beds surrounded by meandering stone walls.
Our first point of interest was to find where the old road from Kilchoan direct to Glendrian crossed the burn. This is identified in the above map image as '1' but on the satellite photo it's probably somewhere between '1' and '2'. On the ground....
....an obvious crossing point is this pile of boulders which is in very much the right place and would, with a bit of work, have made a very serviceable bridge. Whether it is a natural feature or one which was man-made stimulated some debate, though shifting the boulders into place would have been a Herculean task.
In the area marked '3' on the satellite photograph there are four shieling huts, all much the same size and, by comparison with others in this area, well-constructed. It seemed to us that these probably post-date the field workings, when the old arable beds would have made good pasture land.
Clearly visible from space, just to the left of the '3' in the satellite photograph, is this site, which consists of an outer, raised circular bank with a D-shaped stone structure within it. Using our home-made metre square, we drew a plan of it, but don't feel that this will help much in answering the obvious question: what is this site?
Glad to see this work being done,... if you need a good metal detector and owner give me a shout
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