Howe o' Backland [Howie o' Backland, Quoyburing] Broch or Nuraghe : The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map:

<< Our Photo Pages >> Howe o' Backland - Broch or Nuraghe in Scotland in Orkney

Submitted by howar on Wednesday, 13 September 2006 Page Views: 3406

Iron Age and Later PrehistorySite Name: Howe o' Backland Alternative Name: Howie o' Backland, Quoyburing
Country: Scotland
NOTE: This site is 4.365 km away from the location you searched for.
County: Orkney Type: Broch or Nuraghe
Nearest Town: Kirkwall Nearest Village: Deerness
Map Ref: HY58040402
Latitude: 58.921393N Longitude: 2.730404W
Condition:

5	Perfect
4	Almost Perfect
3	Reasonable but with some damage
2	Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1	Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0	No data.
-1	Completely destroyed

4 Ambience:

5	Superb
4	Good
3	Ordinary
2	Not Good
1	Awful
0	No data.

3 Access:

5	Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4	Short walk on a footpath
3	Requiring a bit more of a walk
2	A long walk
1	In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0	No data.

2 Accuracy:

5	co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4	co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3	co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2	co-ordinates of the nearest village
1	co-ordinates of the nearest town
0	no data

4

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**Howe o' Backland** submitted by howar : Approaching mound from E along path (Vote or comment on this photo)

Broch in Orkney,
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY50SE 8, the Howe/Howie of Backland, is also known as Quoyburing, pronounced Quoyburrian (therefore a similar name construction to Quoyburray near Round Howe, though the latter is not regarded as specifically a broch since the excavation).

The mound covers an acre-and-a-half and a trial excavation found a broch wall to almost the full height of the mound itself, which is about 3m. This site probably includes outbuildings, and in the north-west is possibly an arc of external ditch.
To get to this site from Kirkwall take the A960. Opposite the Deerness Stores a road goes down to Marwick Bay. On the left are the farm and buildings of Newark, where the earliest remains found have been two souterrains (add the broch and the Mussaquoy 'Burnt Mound' to give the three usual suspects). Before you come to this there is a sign for the footpath to Aikerskaill. The grassy path is new since last I was here and is nicely level and broad. Fairly soon you reach two long concrete slabs laid over the two drystane walls of a bridge through which the 'drain' that skirts the landward side of the broch field comes around and meets the shore. The nearer you come to the mound the bigger and blockier the 'boulders' about the path and along the field edge. Much then obviously material from the site rather than rounded beach stone. Going by the record the mound should continue into the next field along, though all I see down the other side is a small pond with a very small cone of land sticking out the centre.
In the SW corner the barbed wire fence is just moveable enough to climb carefully over, be sure not to leave the lines tangled. On the southern side is a line of stones that looks like a wall course. But the left half of this looks to be made out of boulders rather than slabs, though I only took a close look at the right as this is a more obvious line of walling and so may have been misled by loose material. Actually I had the feeling that I was dealing with the remains of structures of two different periods because of the disparate nature of stones over the mound, and most of the Broch Age material had been removed at some stage. Up on the eastern end earth and stones lie exposed and apparently eroding downhill, a few white boulders on the surface from ? the broch but mostly dark fragments. In one area here I could make out through the grass bits and bobs of three or more courses of walling. These courses as I saw them were only a scant few inches high. Though I read this as an incurving wall, maybe of the inside of the broch or internal furniture, it could have been a stabilised collapsing wall now incorporated within the mound apart fom this outer face.

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588m W 280° Newark (Orkney)* Souterrain (Fogou, Earth House) (HY57460413)
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