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Rocks & Rows, Sailing Routes across the Atlantic and the Copper Trade

Rocks & Rows, Sailing Routes across the Atlantic and the Copper Trade

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<< Our Photo Pages >> Knowe of Verron - Broch or Nuraghe in Scotland in Orkney

Submitted by howar on Wednesday, 25 August 2004  Page Views: 5578

Iron Age and Later PrehistorySite Name: Knowe of Verron
Country: Scotland County: Orkney Type: Broch or Nuraghe
Nearest Town: Finstown  Nearest Village: Dounby
Map Ref: HY231198
Latitude: 59.058215N  Longitude: 3.342523W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
3 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
3 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
2 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
3

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Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : cliff section to wall projection (Vote or comment on this photo)
Broch in Orkney.
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY21NW 22 is a probable broch 66' NS x 75' EW x 5'8" high, the top excavated early.

Built over a midden containing broch-style pottery. Two structures were found in the coastal exposure, the later one poorly preserved. The earlier one was sub-rectangular or oval with a flagged floor, internal fittings and a large hearth. It was in the later one, with its paved floor and probable flue, that peat ash and metalworking remains were found - the vitrified base of a possible furnace was stolen before the limited 2001 dig.
I harboured slight doubts of its status when I was there too. It is in a similarly precarious position to the Broch of Borwick at Yesnaby but without the wall height to keep you out. As I came to the broch remains all I saw was a short grass mound, and in the modern-times excavated cliff edge I could see a gallery wall sticking out. The 'back' of the site is well protected by a sharp deep sea inlet to the cliffs, calling to mind the Brough of Bigging in Yesnaby. There are traces of early diggings when you are on the broch (even on the grassy top I was careful). This I found out about back home but this doesn't tell you about the square pit there, so could it have been revealed not long ago ? Smallish relatively deep slab-lined square pit and stones surrounding the top. Exquisite. Nearer the cliff edge there are other areas of stone I could make nothing of, could find not even the slightest viewpoint to make them worth a photo.
Looking over the cliff at the recorded excavation I could see the slabs of a rectangular structure and I thought there was something alongside. I could also see the edges of black material coming through the cut, placed there after the exploratory excavation of the eroding section. The weather being fine and dry I gingerly crept down onto the cliff exposure using some of the bigger stones as lightly as possible in order to disturb nothing. I had hoped from down here that the nondescript stone scatters above might show something but still no. You can still see some of the midden material on the 'floor'. Looking from left to right there's the slab-sided structure, the seeming outline only of another structure, some of the gallery wall sticking out (as is often the case with these cliff-eroding sites) and then further up the cliff face a couple of spaced small protruding boulders (including a well-rounded ovoid) that gave the appearance of being the ends of a 'cupboard' or niche.
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Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by SandyG : Broch viewed from north east. (7th June 2015). (Vote or comment on this photo)

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by SandyG : Broch in its context. View from north west. (7th June 2015). (Vote or comment on this photo)

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by SandyG : Broch interior viewed from north. (7th June 2015). (Vote or comment on this photo)

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : Looking along exterior wall to clifftop. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : Clearest segment of exterior wall seen looking uphill. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : 'Pit' at RH side, and feature going towards coastal erosion with excavated structure just off picture.

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : 'Pit' from RH side

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : Stone arrangement HY23087980 in field above knowe (1 comment)

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : Runes from LH stone of arrangement

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : View from the broch mound, showing base and intermittent line of walling and line of burn. Skaill Church in background

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : looking upstream of burn. Ford re-using stones at HY22271977

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : mystery vertical stone-setting in vertical earth matrix behind gate. Gateposts are in re-used stone-settings

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : view from fieldwall, Bay of Skaill behind with steep-sided inlet at right

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : RH cliff section from wall on

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : coastal exposure structure/s from above

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : 2001 dig or exposed later, structure at top of mound

Knowe of Verron
Knowe of Verron submitted by howar : Structure top of mound from early unrecorded excavation

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Lines on the Landscape, Circles from the Sky: Monuments of Neolithic Orkney

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"Knowe of Verron" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment
  
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Re: Knowe of Verron by howar on Wednesday, 06 October 2004
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Revisited in order to measure and more fully photograph the pit I found before. Now I observed more closely the hole is most probably two spaces, one above the other (a twin 'cupboard' ??), and I'm not sure they are really box-like. But it is still a thing in itself rather than simply a result of collapsed medial walling (though there is possibly a collapse about one edge at least, where a slab appears to back onto earth). At right angles a jumbled line of stones head towards the excavated area of coastal erosion, specifically to one of the structures. Trying to make sense of my measurements of individual stones in terms of the whole before my film is done and back is not as easy as I thought ! Approximately 0.4-0.7m by 0.3m, the first space overlapping the second a little at the coastward end, and both seemingly 0.3m deep.
Coming down from the mound there are stones poking out of the ground about 15m away. On my last visit I'd seen them as exposed parts of a rocky outcrop but now it looked more like the remains of a (slightly curving ?) man-made line. From where I was it went in the direction of the RH end of the gateway behind which lay my putative stone arrangement one way and off to the coast the other. It stopped being intermittent 4.5m from the cliff edge, then after maybe half-a-metre became the remains of a fairly substantial wall that at the coast turned a right angle left and continued another 7.7m virtually straight. At 0.9m across this looked like the outer wall of some structure. Back home CANMAP showed a line near here that went from a field to the coast and then went on a zig-zag course. Did this show the modern fence line and an idealised boundary or was it this structure (so HY23081980 to 23061976 and ultimately to 23141973) and the intermittent boundary wall I saw further along ? It could be argued that it is simply the large foundation for a vanished drystane wall, but it had a depth to it and the other bits did not go straight, instead hugging the cliff edge sinuously (unlike my 'corner'). For what it's worth, a few days later I saw similar lines on CANMAP by the Grimsay Wheelhouse.
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