Featured: Ark of Secrets - Neolithic spirit alive in the Middle Ages

Ark of Secrets - Neolithic spirit alive in the Middle Ages

Sign the Petition to protest against building a Hotel on Castle Hill hillfort

Sign the Petition to protest against building a Hotel on Castle Hill hillfort

Who's Online

There are currently, 496 guests and 1 members online.

You are a guest. To join in, please register for free by clicking here

Sponsors

<< Our Photo Pages >> Dingieshowe - Ancient Village or Settlement in Scotland in Orkney

Submitted by howar on Sunday, 11 December 2005  Page Views: 7336

Multi-periodSite Name: Dingieshowe Alternative Name: Dingishowe, Dingy's Howe, Dingy's-how, Duncan's-he
Country: Scotland County: Orkney Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Kirkwall  Nearest Village: Toab
Map Ref: HY54760330
Latitude: 58.914593N  Longitude: 2.787211W
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
4 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
4 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.
4 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
4

Internal Links:
External Links:

I have visited· I would like to visit

whese001 would like to visit

Redfun has visited here

Dingieshowe
Dingieshowe submitted by howar : West of broch from main road (Vote or comment on this photo)
Ancient Village or Settlement in Orkney

Dingieshowe, HY50SW 7, was considered part of a bigger settlement at the end of the 18th century as they considered the stony hillocks beneath the present sand dunes between here and Deerness to have been buildings also. The broch mound still stands over seven metres high but Petrie and Farrer in 1860 only found a building six feet high on the sandy knoll, finding clay and partially vitrified sand ('cramp') beneath the floor that would seem to rule any continuance of this round house below. Only late pottery was found, so this looks like re-use of an earlier structure - evidence of widespread burning beneath the foundations seen as evidence of sacrifice being perhaps reason for prior abandonment instead (the collection included fragments of Corded Ware). Unofficial digging in the 1920s exposed a short length of drystone wall/ing and a kitchen midden south side. In 1964 deposits of shell were seen on both S and W slopes. What looks to be a bank at the north to northwest may only be from sand quarrying.
Coming to the broch by the farmroad is easiest as there is a kind of platform there. I think the short wall-sections are gardenification like that which 'lost' us Peerie Howe further along the track. From this side you see a large excavation on the side of the broch (unfortunately all the areas of digging are now covered by turf or. on the east a sea of grassy tussocks) and a kind of grassy track up the side. On top the interior is all hollowed out. Looking over to the left is a distinct rectangular hollow. If not simply a later excavation pit this looks a likely intramural feature, either a chamber or the beginning of a stair. At the seaward side are further excavation traces. Apart from the flat 'platform' trackside the rest of the mound drops away in front of you (perhaps the mound was once at the end of a distinct tongue of land). At the other side is another track going down, narrower and sharper and steeper. From the bottom there is the sense of ditches or banks between broch and the first sandy hillocks.
Presuming that the tracks from the farmroad to the dunes are 'modern' there is a likelihood that anything proceeding the late broch structure will be be connected with Peerie Howe. Though because of burnt stones in the latter it has been seen as a burnt mound it strikes me as possible that it was subject to the same environmental catastrophe seen at the broch site viz. signs of a major conflagration. Could the stony hillocks reported in the Orkney Statistical Account include the area that became a gravel quarry ? And what of the shell-midden at the cliff base just past this, below Sandaiken ??

You may be viewing yesterday's version of this page. To see the most up to date information please register for a free account.


Dingieshowe
Dingieshowe submitted by howar : top of broch looking to settlement hidden by sand dunes (Vote or comment on this photo)

Dingieshowe
Dingieshowe submitted by howar : from Hall of Tankerness road area of settlement plainly visible (10x zoom) (Vote or comment on this photo)

Do not use the above information on other web sites or publications without permission of the contributor.

Nearby Images from Geograph Britain and Ireland:
HY5403 : Dingieshowe by fabio sassi
by fabio sassi
©2009(licence)
HY5403 : Beach on Taracliff Bay by Anne Burgess
by Anne Burgess
©2018(licence)
HY5403 : Dingieshowe Bay west end by Derek Mayes
by Derek Mayes
©2015(licence)
HY5403 : Southern side of the Mainland/Deerness Isthmus by Peter Moore
by Peter Moore
©2013(licence)
HY5403 : Deerness: beach and dunes, Taracliff Bay by Chris Downer
by Chris Downer
©2011(licence)

The above images may not be of the site on this page, they are loaded from Geograph.
Please Submit an Image of this site or go out and take one for us!


Click here to see more info for this site

Nearby sites

Click here to view sites on an interactive OS map

Key: Red: member's photo, Blue: 3rd party photo, Yellow: other image, Green: no photo - please go there and take one, Grey: site destroyed

Download sites to:
KML (Google Earth)
GPX (GPS waypoints)
CSV (Garmin/Navman)
CSV (Excel)

To unlock full downloads you need to sign up as a Contributory Member. Otherwise downloads are limited to 50 sites.


Turn off the page maps and other distractions

Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 61m S 189° Peerie Howe* Ancient Village or Settlement (HY54750324)
 638m ENE 75° Sandaiken* Ancient Village or Settlement (HY55380346)
 1.0km NW 315° Comely* Cairn (HY54040403)
 1.1km SW 214° Stembister farm stone* Standing Stone (Menhir) (HY54130239)
 1.4km NW 310° Campston Cairn* Cairn (HY537042)
 1.4km SW 220° The Cairn* Artificial Mound (HY53840223)
 1.5km NW 307° St. Peter's Kirk* Ancient Village or Settlement (HY536042)
 1.6km NW 318° St. Peter's Bay Mound* Broch or Nuraghe (HY537045)
 1.9km ENE 77° Mussaquoy* Artificial Mound (HY56590369)
 2.1km WNW 292° Campston (Toab)* Broch or Nuraghe (HY528041)
 2.8km N 2° Eves Howe* Broch or Nuraghe (HY54900611)
 2.8km ENE 72° Newark (Orkney)* Souterrain (Fogou, Earth House) (HY57460413)
 3.0km N 354° Hurnip's Point* Chambered Cairn (HY54480634)
 3.3km ENE 77° Howe o' Backland* Broch or Nuraghe (HY58040402)
 3.6km NE 40° Howan Blo* Cist (HY571060)
 3.9km NW 314° Breck Farm* Standing Stones (HY520060)
 4.0km NNE 28° Millfield* Artificial Mound (HY56700682)
 4.3km NNE 30° Koffer Howe* Artificial Mound (HY56920699)
 4.5km SW 228° Castle Howe (Orkney)* Ancient Village or Settlement (HY514003)
 4.5km NW 308° Longhowe Cairn (HY512061)
 4.6km NW 317° Muckle Crofty* Stone Fort or Dun (HY517067)
 4.6km NW 306° Mine Howe* Chambered Cairn (HY5106406023)
 4.6km SW 234° St. Nicholas Church* Ancient Village or Settlement (HY510006)
 4.6km ENE 61° The Howie* Ancient Village or Settlement (HY58850550)
 4.6km SSW 207° Roseness* Chambered Cairn (ND52629917)
View more nearby sites and additional images

<< Craig Llwyn

Dübberort Tumulus >>

Please add your thoughts on this site

Neolithic Britain And Ireland

Neolithic Britain And Ireland

Sponsors

Auto-Translation (Google)

Translate from English into:

"Dingieshowe" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
Go back to top of page    Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
Re: Dingieshowe by howar on Wednesday, 22 June 2011
(User Info | Send a Message)
re HY50NW 9 the two tumuli are examples of the two kinds seen there
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Dingieshowe by howar on Wednesday, 22 June 2011
(User Info | Send a Message)
First excavated in August 1860. It proved to be a broch standing six foot high 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 Brough 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) gives us an idea of what likely 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 and found a NNE/SSW short cist containing earth and clay with some burnt bone at the bottom, with a celt 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".
[ Reply to This ]

Your Name: Anonymous [ Register Now ]
Subject:


Add your comment or contribution to this page. Spam or offensive posts are deleted immediately, don't even bother

<<< What is five plus one as a number? (Please type the answer to this question in the little box on the left)
You can also embed videos and other things. For Youtube please copy and paste the 'embed code'.
For Google Street View please include Street View in the text.
Create a web link like this: <a href="https://www.megalithic.co.uk">This is a link</a>  

Allowed HTML is:
<p> <b> <i> <a> <img> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <tt> <li> <ol> <ul> <object> <param> <embed> <iframe>

We would like to know more about this location. Please feel free to add a brief description and any relevant information in your own language.
Wir möchten mehr über diese Stätte erfahren. Bitte zögern Sie nicht, eine kurze Beschreibung und relevante Informationen in Deutsch hinzuzufügen.
Nous aimerions en savoir encore un peu sur les lieux. S'il vous plaît n'hesitez pas à ajouter une courte description et tous les renseignements pertinents dans votre propre langue.
Quisieramos informarnos un poco más de las lugares. No dude en añadir una breve descripción y otros datos relevantes en su propio idioma.