Chapel Knowe

Also known as:
Burness
Nearest town:
Kirkwall (8km ESE)
OS reference:
HY38821557
OS sheet:
6
Latitude:
59° 1' 22.88 N
Longitude:
3° 3' 56.62 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Chapel Knowe (Broch) by wideford

Chapel Knowe from East Quatquoy, site is south of Burness

Image credit: wideford
wideford
wideford Sep 3, 2014

Articles

Chapel Knowe

wideford
wideford Sep 3, 2014

Coming from Finstown along the A966 turn right onto the Burness road and soon you can make out the distinctive broch profile right of the farm, I hadn’t expected to see anything. Having come a long way I used my binoculars and saw that there were kie in the field. So I bethought to turn down to East Quatquoy and make my way along the shore instead, but a garden extension stopped me short and not expecting to go this way I didn’t know the state of the tides so contented myself with distant shots. At high zoom I see a low scoop coming from the mound. I presume this is the assumed chapel enclosure, but it brings to my mind the stony areas landward of two of the Evie brochs. If coming along the coast another time I would try from further back. You can see the tidal islets called the Skerries of Coubister via which one very low tide a man in waders was able to reach Damsay. His idea was folk used this route to reach the island but perhaps it had been the islanders that went the other way to reach the Burness site. For from Chapel Point there is a pre-eminent view from Finstown through Kirkwall all the way around to Crookness, taking in most of the isles in too.

Miscellaneous

Chapel Knowe
Broch
wideford
wideford Sep 3, 2014

RCAHMS record no HY31NE 1 at Chapel Point, south of Burness ‘burgh headland’ in Firth. The name Chapel Knowe probably replaces the field-name Chapel Park [park=quoy ‘enclosure]. In 1922 Mr Stevenson, the landowner, removed copious amounts of stone to build very sturdy fieldwalls, despite which the broch profile is still obvious. A draper called Turfus found in the debris an incised 40” fragment of red sandstone with a two-and-a-half inch high cloaked figure and other assorted markings. On the west side a broch wall section 14’ long and 9’ high was exposed, having a 2’ thick secondary wall built against the face. At its south end a lintelled passage led to a corbelled mural cell with a void above that. The mound sits on a platform aligned N/S and up to 25m across according to which direction you look. Hugh Marwick, who followed up on the discovery, estimated the broch interior as only twenty feet. The archaeologists apply the Chapel Park name to a twenty metre stone spread running NW from the mound.

Sites within 20km of Chapel Knowe

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