Linnahowe

Artificial Mound
Destroyed
HY233201

Also known as:

'The Castle', Linahowe and Verra

Nearest town:

Stromness (11km SSE)

OS reference:

HY233201

OS sheet:

Latitude:

59° 3' 40.29 N

Longitude:

3° 20' 15.29 W

Added to TMA by

wideford

Images (7)
Fieldnotes (1)
Folklore (1)
Miscellaneous (3)

Images

Image of Linnahowe (Artificial Mound) by wideford

seen from track going to Knowe of Verron

Image credit: wideford

wideford Aug 4, 2006

Silage pit at right of mound, Skaill Church visible behind.

Image credit: wideford

wideford Aug 4, 2006

mound seen from Lenahowe road above, silage pit at right back

Image credit: wideford

wideford Aug 4, 2006

uphill side of mound, stones evident in possible excavation depression

Image credit: wideford

wideford Aug 4, 2006

seen alongside few stones visible

Image credit: wideford

wideford Aug 4, 2006

evidence for stones used to construct mound mixed with modern dump

Image credit: wideford

wideford Aug 4, 2006

silage pit section across seaward end of mound

Image credit: wideford

wideford Aug 4, 2006

Articles

Linnahowe

Artificial Mound

wideford Aug 19, 2004

Up past Skaill Church take a left at the very next junction, a farm road that takes three sides of a square that brings it back to the proper road again. On the first side is the farm track down to Lenahowe. Here is the Linnahowe Mound just as advertised by the NMRS, a long prominent mound occupying most of an enclosure, many stones revealed by the pit but nothing resembling any kind of structuring. I only saw a few stones in the undug bit, nothing you could make anything of in the slightest.

Linnahowe

Artificial Mound

wideford Jan 9, 2006

Marwick (“The Orkney Herald” 11/7/1888), rather fancifully, in my opinion, asserts that Linahowe means “the goddess of love and marriage”. He records that local tradition says the Church of Rome sent a priest called Mohr to the Bay of Skaill to convert the pagans, and that he set up a church near by Linahowe.

Linnahowe

Artificial Mound

wideford May 18, 2010

Brand 1703 “the Minister of Sandwick’s Manse is said to have been the residence of one of the kings of Picts... to this day called Koningsgar or the King’s House... tho now kept in some repair... The figure thereof and the contrivance of its two Rooms or Chambers one above and one below, of narrow dimensions, and antick, and the Building hath been but coarse.”

Linnahowe

Artificial Mound

wideford Dec 28, 2009

In a book on the Breckness Estate there is a quote from 1830 of “a mound of stones on the sea beach, called the Castle of Sneusgarth” which means the castle is either this mound or (more likely) the broch [unless there was a now lost mound at the taing]. The castle is a moveable feast whichever way you read things.

Linnahowe

Artificial Mound

wideford Aug 16, 2004

The other side of Skaill Church from the Castle of Snusgar. ‘The Castle’ was an old structure now gone to leave behind a detail-less spread of stones in an extensive mound. A silage pit dug through one end uncovered no evidence of walls amongst the stones but did find ashes and old bones.
On analogy with why the brochs of Burray were locally differentiated as “Hillock” and “Castle” it appears that the latter name is used for sites with subterranean chambers (“dungeons”).