wideford
from top of eastern side across interior to stones outside mound
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HY21NE 12 at HY28001647 is a flat-topped turf-covered mound of earth & stones 25’D, a metre high but topped by a 5’D mound of almost the same height. A barrow-digger started work on the ‘building’ but was thankfully stopped byy the farmer. The NMRS reference to a rouge pot etc is an error for my news index for Skara Brae NW 12
open end of passage behind ?lintels, taller stone 0.6m and view 1.2m across, masonry wall behind grass top left quadrant of image
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masonry wall of passage, slabs very approx. 1” thick
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Don’t know how I missed the entrance to the ?souterrain before, just inside the fence on the S side of the road at HY2706715113. Guess I looked for a channel further down whereas it starts as a hole like a badgers set (no sign of the masonry walls in the dark, should have used the camcorder’s nightlight) literally a couple of feet from the actual fence behind three flat stones. I assume these are a few of the lintels from the intermittent roof of the built passage. This is described as 800cm square to begin with, though perhaps narrowing further on – it goes south-easterly to a ditch but after some 2.5m turns quickly eastwards and then the hillslope and presence of mud stopped investigations progressing to what they describe as the inner end (or else it goes ~100m down to the loch). By the western stone I could see a masonry wall of thin stones behind a grass fringe. Not wishing to be disturbed by the ploughman in the next field I did not enter for a more thorough going over. This side of the road the ‘broken’ mound is ascribed to outbuildings on account of projecting stones but it is obvious that the passage is within the tower’s circuit – at The Howe we found a souterrain which had been struck through the tomb at the centre of the broch so the road might have demolished a northerly continuance (an odd coincidence otherwise).
sides of excavation scar/s at top of mound seen from side facing ferry road
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looking along excavation scar/s from partway up landward end
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mound looking roughly E or NE with Wasbister Cairn behind
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Wasbister Cairn looking S across small ‘lochs’ and monuments to Bigswell
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Wasbister Cairn looking N with possible ‘ring’ surrounding it
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S-N across Wasbister Cairn’s northern edge with possible wall-face stone R
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Wasbister Cairn’s possible wall-face stone with tape out to 1‘
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stones in W side of central portion of Wasbister Cairn with tape out to 1m
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Wasbister Mound coming from ‘disc barrow’ with small lochan/pool behind
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Wasbister Mound seen from the east with ‘disc barrow’ in background
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In the same field as the Wasbister ‘disc barrow’ and the Bookan Cairn settlement are two lesser sites, presumably [a lot?] later than the monuments.
The Wasbister Cairn can be found by climbing the hillslope to a bright green grassy mound by the top end of the northern fence. This very rough mound (very very ragged and disjointed it is definitely an item), is only a few yards away from the cairn itself. From some views the ragged mound is so big that this and the cairn could even possibly be a single item subjected to different fates at E and W. But I only found a single flat stone on the whole of the mound’s surface. As for the cairn, though there are some loose stones around the base there is no sign that these have ever been embedded. There are a few horizontal slabs dotted about its surface and one at the northern side with a seemingly curved face sticking out as if originally part of walling – perhaps there are similar out of sight.
The Wasbister Mound lies down near the Dyke of Sean. Rather than a lochan I would consider the body of water a pow or large pool. Either side of the dyke the number and size of pools varies and old maps show many straight lines in and around them of unknown origin, some still visible. The slight mound is most easily seen coming from the barrow to the pool. There is a comparatively large piece of erosion at the highest point showing earth and a couple of smallish stones. In going back to the fieldgate I passed over a large rise – it isn’t on record and there are no stones or anything visible but it has a feeling of settlement
Wasbister Cairn, NMRS record no. HY21SE 19 at HY28811397, is a small mound of earth and stones on the SE slope of the hill between the Ring of Brodgar and Bookan farm, by the top end of the fence from the road. There was a stone setting around the base and its present dimensions of ~8mD by 0.6m high accords well with 27x1.5’ then (though I make it vary 6.4-6.5m across, giving some idea of the annular ring’s dimensions).
Wasbister Mound, RCAHMS record no. HY21SE 20 at HY28961378. is a possible burnt mound 6mD by 0.3m high (I only made out 5m across and measuring from lowest point of immediately surrounding land 0.6m high) close to a “small loch” and roughly 100 yards E of the ‘disc barrow’.
RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY21SE 9 consists of two cairns at HY28591427 and 28601422, both N/S aligned, with no finds known. Call them i) and ii) I shall. In 1880 i) measured six feet high and some fifty feet across, being almost sub-rectangular, now it is down as a grassy N/S oval 23.7m by 15.7m and 1.7m high of many small stones having a slight depression in its top. Item ii) was described as eighty feet around and four-and-a-half high, now is an oval 20.6m by 15.7m varying from 2.5m high on the uphill side to only 1m on the downhill side – not what you would expect from a level mound on a hillside. At its centre many small stones are exposed in a not quite circular depression some 6mD. Could the basin of burnt ?soapstone [HY21SE 44] found in 1926 have come from this vicinity ?
In the 16thC Jo Ben saw the complete skeleton of an alleged 14’ giant who had been found in a tomb on a small hill near the loch of Stenhouse, with coins beneath his head [presumably Viking], and I wonder if this relates to the “stone coffin” the 1880 ONB records on being found on an eminence described as being “thrown [up] by the Brecks” 1/4 mile S of Bookan and almost 1/2 mile SW of Bockan. Usually for coffin one should read long cist. The cairn looked to be a smaller version of Skae Frue so there must have been something distinctive they then both held in common, most likely a large robbed depression in the centre. Unfortunately no such site exists now [or there was a reluctance to identify it with a recognised site] so the best guess is that it should be identified with a mound on the other side of a defunct farm track from HY21SE 9 ii) which merges with the quarry’s E side [could the quarry have ‘swallowed up’ the actual site if this was not it ?]. RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY21SE 24 at HY28571426 is some 13mD and like the cairn over the way is higher on the uphill side, varying from 1.7m to 0.8m [could they sit in a larger depression that perhaps preceded the quarry ??]