greywether
The privately-funded excavation of Kilpheder in 1952 by Tom Lethbridge with the help of a local skipper helped bring about an awareness of this class of monument.
Sadly, there is little to be seen at the site now other than the tops of some wall courses.
Access. Drive NW along the track from Cille Phaidair village until you reach a crossroads. Park here. Continue walking NW for about 200m. The site is in a mound on your right.
Visited 29 July 2004
Piers not touching outer walls.
The joining lintels are missing (or were never part of this site).
What’s a Wheelhouse then?
Wheelhouses date from the Scottish Iron Age and are roughly contemporary with brochs. Let’s say, roughly, 500 bce to 500ce.
A wheelhouse is a circular drystone building with a single entrance. Its interior is divided by a number of stone piers arranged like the spokes of a wheel. The set of bays this creates open onto a larger, central room. The bays often seem to have had corbelled stone roofs while the larger central space could only have been roofed with timbers or whalebones.
Wheelhouses have sometimes been called “aisled round houses” because, in many cases, the stone piers – the spokes of the wheel – do not join up with the outer wall of the house. Instead, there is a gap spanned by massive lintels.
One of the best known wheelhouses is Kilpheder in South Uist excavated by Tom Lethbridge in 1952. Despite the best of intentions, there is now nothing meaningful to be seen at Kilpheder.
The only Uist site where the layout of a wheelhouse can be appreciated is at Grimsay. The few examples in Shetland are generally incorporated into other buildings making them less easy to interpret or appreciate.
Shhhhh. This site is a secret.
It is probably the best preserved example of a very rare kind of Scottish site and this is just about the only place you will find a reference to it*. It’s not even on Canmore.
North Uist with its total indifference to heritage tourism seems not to have heard of it. There are no references to it in its tourist literature and there are no signposts or paths at the site.
Wheelhouses (see Miscellaneous for a more complete definition) date from the Iron Age and are roughly contemporary with brochs. They are found only in the Western Isles and Shetland.
I’ll let the photos tell the rest of the story. Definitely recommended for anyone visiting the Uists.
Access It’s not a difficult site to find but it is not visible until you come upon it so a good map or a GPS will help. Start by skirting the E (right) side of the cottage situated at the NW end of Loch Shornaraigh. Cross between the two inlets and head for the higher ground in front of you. Once up there, turn right through the gate and keep going for about 200m. It should be in a dip in front of you.
*One other source is the excellent but probably out-of-print The Lost Wheelhouses of Uist by Susan Hothersall and Robert Tye (2000). The definition of a Wheelhouse given below bears a strong resemblance to that given in this publication.
Visited 27 July 2004
There are two surviving chambered cairns on Barra – Dun Bharpa and Balnacraig. As they are only 800m apart, both can be easily visited together. This is by far the more interesting of the two.
As it is relatively undisturbed, it is one of the best examples of how a Hebridean Passage Grave would look once it had been sealed up and fallen out of regular use.
The cairn is about 5m high with many peristaliths still in place. The passage and chamber have not been opened but their location can be determined by the position of roofstones visible on top of the cairn.
Given the height of the cairn, the passage/chamber must either be located high in the cairn or, more intriguingly, be furnished with very tall sidestones.
Access. We drove up the metalled road to the museum which leaves the main road at NF656019 but stopped when the houses stop as the track looked a bit rough after that. It was.
After that it’s a bit of a stiff climb up to the cairn with a few fences to cross.
However, when we reached the cairn (from the SW), we noticed what looked like the posts of a waymarked track approaching from the NW and continuing to Balnacraig. I don’t know where in Barra it starts but it might be worth checking out.
Visited 28 July 2004
The typically E facing passage covered by at least two lintels.
The apparent lack of headroom would be solved if fallen cairn material were removed from the entrance.
Chamber with fallen sidestones from the N.
In the distance (to the S) is a typical watery North Uist landscape with a series of lochs lying between the 10m and 20m contour lines. The cairn is 50m above this.
The hill in the distance is probably Ruabhal – the highest point on Benbecula at just over 400m.
Having read Canmore and other reports before the visit, I had expected to be underwhelmed by this site.
Comments like “has been much disturbed by secondary buildings and its present form bears little relationship to its original plan” do not raise expectations.
To my eyes, what you actually get is a well fairly well preserved Hebridean Passage Grave with a lintelled passage plus chamber with a few side stones still standing a most of the rest fallen into the chamber.
Any secondary building was limited to the outside cairn material and, reading the reports again after the visit, maybe that’s what they meant.
But don’t be put off. This is a site worth visiting especially if you’ve come to see Clettraval anyway.
Visited 27 July 2004
A 1.5m standing stone about 200m S of Clettraval chambered cairn and on the way to Tigh Cloiche.
Not much else you can say about it apart from the splendid view.
Access – see Clettraval
Visited 27 July 2004
General view from the E.
The S end of the facade and the backstone of the chamber can be seen.
Straight facade from the SE.
There are five stone S of the chamber entrance. The gaps here are stones now covered in vegetation.
The full length of the five-compartment chamber (10.5m) viewed from the E.
The chamber does curve a little to the N as it reaches the entrance but the curvature here is exaggerated by the fallen side stones.
59 page PDF file of excavation of cairn and wheelhouse (here called a fort). Plans are at pages 58 and 59.
The innermost two compartments from the N. The chamber backstone to the R stands 2.1m high from floor level.
This is a cairn which seems to have lost its way.
It’s a Clyde Cairn in the heart of Hebridean Passage Grave territory. Probably not the only Clyde Cairn in the area admittedly but the one with the most positive identification.
Quite a lot to see here especially if the nearby standing stone at South Clettraval and the slightly further away Hebridean Passage Grave at Tigh Cloiche are included.
Clettraval consists of an unusually long five-compartment chamber facing E and a straight facade of fallen stones running N/S (best preserved in the S). An Iron Age wheel house, not very well preserved, has been built in the W end of the cairn. It was excavated in 1934 (see Link).
The views from here are splendid – even on a cloudy day. The cairn sits on he 100m contour and, to the S, are the low-lying Lochs Bhaghasaraidh and Steaphain.
Access is very easy. Drive up the metalled military road which runs E from the crossroads at NF718722 until you reach the first radio mast where there is parking. The cairn can be seen in the field opposite.
Visited 27 July 2004
Not the best preserved Hebridean Passage Grave on North Uist but one of the more accessible. For access and other sites in the area see Carinish.
Not much of the chamber and none of the passage is visible.
It is unusually housed in a long cairn which, viewed on the approach, is still rather impressive. Typically, it faces E where the cairn may have been horn-shaped.
Some of the peristaliths are still visible especially on its N side.
Visited 27 July 2004
The vegetation covers some of the more horizontal stones but in this view looking W can be seen
– (near the centre) the back stone of the inner compartment
– (in front of that) the septal stones dividing the chamber into two compartments
– (bottom left corner) side stone of outer compartment.
In the distance can be seen a stone marking the edge of the cairn.
Wee_malky refers to the inside of the cairn possibly being unsafe. Certainly a consideration if you’re sitting in there with the best part of 2m of cairn material above you!
There is also evidence of a repair job having been necessary during the building of the cairn or while it was still in use.
As you enter the cairn, you will see a 1.6m pillar with some cairn material to your right. The pillar supports the first lintel of the chamber (the one after the surviving passage lintel), the N end of which does not rest on a chamber stone in the way the other lintels do.
Presumably the lintel broke or (more likely) was threatening to and the pillar was put in to support it. The cairn material to its right could be further support or the blocking off of that area.
Erskine Beveridge in his 1911 North Uist , Its Archaeology and Topography (recently reprinted) says of this site,
We have been assured upon the best authority that Langass Barp contains a second chamber with its separate access from the north side, our informant having entered this within the past thirty years; while it is also stated that even a third chamber exists. Upon this subject we can add little, except that the east chamber already disclosed occupies but a small proportion of the whole structure, ample space remaining for at least two others.
No Hebridean Passage Grave has produced definite evidence of more than one chamber and, because many are ruined, the plans of most are known. Perhaps the locals were just having a little fun.
The NE section of the cairn.
There was a V-shaped forecourt. One stone of the N edge can still be seen (arrowed).
The view from the short surviving passage just as you enter the chamber.
The first chamber stone is on the far left.
The support for the broken lintel is in the centre and the fallen cairn material or blocking is on the right.
Looking out (E) of the chamber to the entrance.
The stone put in to support thr broken lintel can be seen on the left.
Side stones and back stone (3rd from left) in the S and W of the chamber.
Side stones in the N of the chamber.
The stone on the right is about 1m high.