Loch Migdale Henge

Nearest town:
Dornoch (18km E)
OS reference:
NH624916
OS sheet:
21
Latitude:
57° 53' 33.65 N
Longitude:
4° 19' 17.25 W
Added to TMA by

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Folklore

Loch Migdale Henge
Henge
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Jul 3, 2025

Relating to the lake on the bank of which the henge stands (and in which the crannog sits):

The Banshee, or Vaugh, or Weird Woman of the Water.

Four or five miles from Skibo there is a lake called Migdall, with a great granite rock of the same name to the north of it. At one end a burn runs out past Moulinna Vaugha, or the kelpie’s mill. It is also haunted by this banshee, which the miller’s wife saw about three years ago. She was sitting on a stone, quiet, and beautifully dressed in green silk, the sleeves of which were curiously puffed from the wrist to the shoulder. Her long hair was yellow, like ripe corn, but on a nearer view she turned out to have no nose. – (Miller’s wife).

‘The Folk-lore of Sutherlandshire’ by Miss Dempster, in The Folk-Lore Journal v.6 (1888).

Miscellaneous

Loch Migdale Henge
Henge
Kammer
Kammer Jan 19, 2004

As featured on Time Team in January 2004, here’s what the Channel 4 web site had to say about the site and the programme:

Further excavation on the shore indicates the site of a small ritual henge monument. Complete with entrance facing the loch, the henge contains a stone marker to align the entrance with a landscape feature in the distance where two hills meet. It was later calculated that this point on the skyline would mark the position of the rising sun on the spring and autumn equinoxes.

The RCAHMW record, predating the Time Team excavation, describes the site as a henge, hut circle, barrow or cairn (keeping their options open there):

It measures 12.0m overall and comprises a level, circular platform 7.4m in diameter, surrounded by a ditch 1.1m wide and 0.2m deep, outside which there is a bank 1.2m wide and 0.2m high, revetted externally by a discontinuous line of small horizontal blocks. The bank is broken on the SE, where there is a gap leading to a causeway across the ditch. Both gap and causeway, about 0.6m wide, are slightly mutilated.

Topics

Time Team Tiny Henge Hey? 36
Spaceship mark
Spaceship mark
Jan 2004

Sites within 20km of Loch Migdale Henge