Dun Skeig seen from Gigha across, at right hand edge of image. In the foreground is just a fraction of what seems a huge unrecorded site that I have found after a bit of Irish Gaelic translation and a lot of scratches, above Port Righ – Port of the King – and Port Mor. Just a teaser. A lot more photographs and fieldnotes to come. Something that needs to be done right
Seen from the minor road near Marguard. Loch Tarbert to the right.
Seen from the Gigha ferry. Want a dominant vantage point for miles around? Look no further than Dun Skeig
The NW side seen from the Portachollan road.. if you squint hard enough you can see one of the entrances a third of the way along the ramparts from the left. There is a clearer view of it to be had a bit uphill but I didn’t stop – was on a timer, big drive down to Manchester. Got there ten hours later.
Anyway… plenty online about this place: multiple forts, one vitrified, dwellings… a ‘must visit’ in my opinion. Best walking routes online. Go. I will when next up, touch wood. What a place.
Seen from above the shore SSW of Portachollan.. I cannot recommend a visit to this stunningly beautiful place in May highly enough.
NW side seen from Portachollan – which is little known down an unsigned road and idyllic. A white tailed sea eagle and a diver hauntingly calling in the space of a minute.
The SW side seen from the A83 near Stewartfield
Stones of the south and east walls of one of the huts on the upper slopes of Cnoc an Itich. The number of hut sites approaches double figures at this unrecorded site above Tigh Carn na Faire and my survey work remains incomplete. Port Mor in the background
Via The Prehistory Guys Prehistoric Archaelogy News YouTube podcast of February ‘26… it has been announced in the latest issue of Antiquity magazine that archaeologists have discovered that this site contains the largest prehistoric nucleated settlement in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. Over 600 Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age hut platforms have been identified. The site also includes the adjoining Neolithic site of Spinners Hill within its outer rampart. It becomes the earliest known prehistoric urban settlement, pushing back that boundary by 500 years. What is believed to be a Bronze Age water cistern has also been discovered, the first of its kind in Ireland.
Jet necklaces excavated from the barrow, currently on display in Weston Park Museum, Sheffield
A collection of spheroids, very hard stones used in the production of other stone tools and also thought to have ritual use, found at Arbor Low, currently on display at Weston Park Museum, Sheffield
The cist in 1848, illustrated in Bateman’s Ten Years Diggings, currently on display at Weston Park Museum, Sheffield
Seen from St Michael’s churchyard, Teflys. The hillfort is at the top of the summit to the left.. a commanding vantage point indeed.
This site is unrecorded. I chanced upon it today, 23/11/25, while field walking uphill from the settlement and burial chamber. This circular structure is approximately eighty feet across, the western arc is in better preservation while the eastern is mainly discerned as a vegetation pattern due to stone robbing. Within it are multiple structural remains, one rectangular. which may be of later date. No stonework is more than a foot above ground, and the spread of the rampart, if you could call it that, is approximately three feet across. I’m classifying this as an enclosure but others are welcome to their opinions.
The view from space… a Google Earth image that I have tweaked and rendered monochrome to accentuate the circularity of the enclosure. The parts above ground that curve round and are seen in my other two images show as off-white, to the left. The right hand part of the image shows the circle as a dark vegetation pattern… much stone must have been robbed for the surrounding field wall.
Remains of a structure within the enclosure, which can be seen crossing the image in the mid- distance
Looking NNW from on top of the extant rampart of the circular enclosure, which can be seen curving across the image. Alas, other images I thought I’d taken are absent as evidently I didn’t press hard enough on my phone’s camera button.
A grab shot at speed from the motorway by the other half… I had both hands on the wheel. Spencer
Yet another visit to this site… I must love it or something. 23rd November 2035
