Berstane Broch Broch or Nuraghe : The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map:

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Submitted by howar on Thursday, 03 June 2004 Page Views: 5799

Iron Age and Later PrehistorySite Name: Berstane Broch
Country: Scotland County: Orkney Type: Broch or Nuraghe
Nearest Town: Kirkwall
Map Ref: HY475100 Landranger Map Number: 6
Latitude: 58.973926N Longitude: 2.914837W
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

2 Ambience:

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

1 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

3

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**Berstane Broch** submitted by howar : Vertical line of rocks far left above centre at right angles to the rest, projecting over the cliff Orkney HY475100 see main text (Vote or comment on this photo)

Broch in Orkney

Not far from the edge of town, down below Berstane Farm follow the track that goes to the right, the direction of Inganess Bay. At the far corner of the grounds of Berstane House is a dovecot, a square masonry tower with a stepped back at the top. From here look diagonally acoss to the familiar shape of an eroded broch on the small headland at the bottom of a field. There are supposed to be other settlement remains in the vicinity but I'm not aware of having seen any. Coming down to it I saw a big scoop in the centre of my field of view which I thought to be the broch interior with small stones around the edge revealed. But from the top of the mound I saw this to be a scoop excavated from the ege rather, for here I was definitely in the region of the interior.

This broch is of a similar size and situation to Ingshowe but with fewer large stones exposed to view. I had to crawl through a barbwire fence to stand on the high point from where I could make out more easily the general 'furniture' of a broch. CANMORE said a section was exposed 10' up the cliff face and I had seen on the left an easy way down to the beach. The masses of seaweed made further exploration dangerous and I would advise not going alone . Carefully I made my way around to the sandy area at the foot of the cliff supporting the broch. Here the upper part looks very similar to Ingshowe (right down to the stones pointing out at right-angles over the cliff) except that the base isn't well delineated - probably owing to its being built upon well inclined strata.

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