wideford

Discovered in the Pierowall Quarry on Westray, my photos are from its first day on Orkney Mainland (Tankerness House Museum).

All that is recorded are the bare measurements and yet this is the stone that named the hill and the road . Unfotunately my scanner insists on cutting off the bottom of the slide , but just visible here on the very bottom right-hand side is an exposed horizontal rock stratum and I wonder if this extends behind to form a natural platform for this stone ( or even have to do with why it was stood there in the first place ) . Oriented ENE/WSW.

It has been called by this name since at least 1880 but no-one knows who excavated it , the only famous Howe Harper that I can find is a present-day sportswoman rather than a proto-archaeologist . The twice I have been in the vicinity I have been put off accessing it by the combination of its siting and the walls and fences closing it off .
I had an Alfred Watkins moment once , seeing Wideford Hill Cairn looking across to Cuween Hill cairn and wondering where Howe Harper (on a hill the other side of the Finstown ‘pass’ from Cuween Hill) looked to (?Bookan) . This could be seen as a fantasy based only on which known sites in the Finstown/Binscarth are I had visited . Quite liked the idea of pais of cairns bookending plains still . Now , looking again at NMRS record HY31SW 9 on RCAHMS , should I see support in this site being built on a platform like Wideford Hill Cairn and “being similar in size, profile and topographical position to Cuween Hill Cairn” ?
The Wasdale site is only a short walk from here .

Cribbing here : most of what you see is mediaeval around a modern cairn but at the west side are broch-like stones and a resemblance has been noted to ‘causewayed island duns’ in the Outer Hebrides . A crannog by any other name ?
I have come across several sites like this but usually with causeway still obvious all the time . On a map they resemble spores attached to the shoreline , you might not even notice the
?indicative causeway if it were over a certain size and you were simply walking the shoreline rather than striking out or looking from a vantage point .
This is a complicated multi-period site whose use has changed several times , so I would refer you to NMRS record HY31SW 8 on RCAHMS for further proposed history (traditionally the site of a chapel but a recent two-volume tome on early Christian sites in the Northern Isles etc. found no evidence, finding a broch origin more in accord with what’s there).

Grid reference down to a few metres now, RCAHMS will update sometime now I have passed on further details.

NMRS No. HY21SE 41. Nothing to see now, move along. All that is left under the soil is the incompletely excavated tomb and whatever might have preceded that.

VERY multi-period: probable Viking longhouse, Pictish settlement, souterrain, broch, roundhouse, passage grave...

The passage was uncovered at the end of the 1981 season , my last time with the dig

This is the broch that most people think of in association with the howe

On the left just past the Twatt junction going to Birsay this stone can clearly be seen out in the open near the base of Ravie Hill . Unable to match the sighting precisely on the map . CANMAP shows tumuli , mounds etc. in this general area but not this feature . Alas I have a strong idea that its prominence is owing to it being one of many fakes placed as landscaping in the Orkneys at the end of the 20th century .

RCAHMS NMRS No. HY22NE 3 at HY25312629.
Other names Stanger and the Stone o’Quoybune .
On the corner of the road junction before the Birsay Community Centre looking very forlorn . Looks very plain even for a standing stone .

RCAHMS NMRS No. HY31SW 6
Recently I found the mapped remains of this accessible and so took the chance to investigate (at the time only the remains of St. Mary’s were shown on Canmap). This mound isn’t so prominent – more than a rise but less than a tump. There are two levels to it. The stones are on the smaller higher piece on the left. Mostly all that is left is the one course.

Perhaps if it weren’t so easy to get onto the ‘Viewpoint’ site (just over a turnstile from the new Viewpoint and often a little damp to reach) wouldn’t appeal but it is a significant feature in this landscape, as much I feel as Maes Howe (which is only just down at the junction of this Stoneyhall Road and the Kirkwall-Stromness road). From the depression at the top you look out lochwards and see how heavily humanised even this view across the holms is. In the loch edges on either side are many stones, and just off the area which leads into the main body of Harray Loch can still be seen an obvious rectangular structure.

An archaeologist friend of mine who had visited this site said perhaps it did not appear in the records because rather than a broch (which had been his impression too) it was actually the site of St. Mary’s church that had somehow been displaced on the map. However on closer inspection during my second visit I found a very small piece of exposed structure, only two or three thin slabs but feeling more prehistoric than ecclesiastical. Being not all that observant I missed a relatively big chunk of stone in the remains of a trench on the side until my last visit.

Going back onto CANMAP today I find on the next promontory along as well as the remains of St. Mary’s there is also shown the Grimston (alias Biggings) Broch which I’m sure wasn’t shown last time I looked, so now I shall add this to Orkney as a positive.

RCAHMS NMRS No. HY31SW 6

RCAHMS NMRS No. HY50SW 1.
Described as a possible broch within a ringwork this site reminds me now of Tingwall, something extensively modified. The photos I shall add only show the main portion – it has been cut through by a ‘modern’ track and what remains on the right of the track is rather inconspicious. Difficult to make sense of the transect, this ‘wall’ appears too linear for a circular structure.
It lies off the main road about half-way between Toab and Campston and on the same side of the road, and though called after the latter it actually lies on a track going down to ?Venikelday. It may be of significance that it lies roughly half-way between the Mine Howe and Dingieshowe sites.

The OS position is imprecise because the site lies on a very plain stretch of the road alongside the Loch of Skaill. It seems strange that in this general area there is nothing noted apart from a quarry. I have called this a natural rock formation (despite its regularity) just to be on the safe side. But it does stand out as possibly man-made, perhaps the corner of something that mostly still is hidden by the road overhang on this section of road. Could it be a step in a wall? To me what one can see presents the appearance of a triangular niche for some unknown purpose of its own.

HY 44 09. RCAHMS No. HY40NW 5.
Not being found in the Crantit region RCAHMS have referenced this to a structure in Upper Scapa. Not easy to get to, lying in a valley field. If it isn’t a souterrain it could represent the remains of a chambered cairn. It has been suggested to me that it was made for cattle but I reckon the line of very short stone orthostats along the length would risk their laming.
The reason Ordnance Survey found no memory of the site with the farmer in 1966 is that the Bichan’s only bought Crantit in 1949 .

HY 2963 1331. RCAHMS NMRS No. HY21SE 13.
From the main road this outlier is the first object you come to in the site that contains the Ring of Brodgar. Described usually as a standing stone the two short stumps on the same mound make this present more the appearance of another, much smaller, stone circle. Archaeologists have said that the two stumps are the remains of a cove in front of the main stone, but on the ground it is not obvious how more stones could fit into such a pattern here. What is very evident is that the Comet Stone itself stands in a fairly large circular depression atop the mound. I wonder if originally it stood by itself and then later was made into the centre of an observational platform?

HY 4011 2286. RCAHMS NMRS No. HY42SW 3.
As you go to the pier for Rousay this site lies on the left-hand side of the road just before the farm that overlooks the pier. Tingwall or Thing-voll was almost certainly a broch (another example of a broch associated with a thing is Dingy’s Howe Broch [Dingieshowe] at the isthmus between Upper Sanday and Deerness) but the mound is much mutilated. Close to the top of the mound is what looks like a megalithic entrance but I am suspicious of its antiquity as I can find no reference to this. It has certainly been much extended since the ‘Broch Age’. This site still repays the use of even the simplest form of magnification to ‘bring it out’.

HY 2537 2678. RCAHMS NMRS No. HY22NE 4
As you go up to Birsay only just past the A967-B9056 junction there can be seen the remains of the Oxtro Broch in the field to your left. Not many courses remain (five at best) and it is best viewed with some form of magnification for it to stand out from the road. It is strange that a site so close to the road is unmarked. If it weren’t for the cattle on my visits I would have popped into the field to get to the other side.