If you’re into landscape survey and later historical periods in the Scottish Highlands, you have to be very interested in walls. And fortunately – we are…
One of the great things about doing the Glencoe survey as part of a field school is that there is always time to stop and talk about what you’re doing, how to interpret the landscape, and of course to look at walls. For example, what are these strange, thin walls made of a single line of stones, only one course high?
Is this a wall? A line of stones in the farmstead at Achtriachtan
One of the great things about not doing the Glencoe survey as part of a field school is that you can move very fast and get lots done. After three seasons of field school survey at Glencoe, we decided that what we really needed in this last mini-season was good plans of our houses, farms, sheepfolds and other combinations of walls.
So that’s what we did, in an expert team made up of Rob Ferro, Katie McCollum and myself, with some extra help from Leonore Kitt and Eddie Stewart. So at Achtriachtan, we had a happy time with Rob’s Differential GPS (accurate to one centimetre) mapping an architectural complex which can only be described as complicated – with two ranges at right angles, a series of big terraces and enclosures coming down the slope, and that odd wall made up of a single line of stones. It’s apparently a 19th-century farm, but very different in layout from the more standard farmhouse-plus-barn that we see at Achnacon, Leacantuim and the main Achtriachtan Farm just up the glen.
Rob and Leonore figure out the East Range of the complex at Achtriachtan
Then we moved to another complex of houses and enclosures on the far side of the A82, though we were relieved to find that this was less complicated and so quicker to map.
Katie figures out the western house in the lower complex at Achtriachtan
Handsome fireplace built of large slabs (the scale is 20cm long) at the lower complex at Achtriachtan. Nice view up the glen, though that wouldn’t have been visible from here when the walls of the house were still standing…
From there we moved across the river Coe to the two characterful houses that we investigated last year, and once again Rob and his dGPS did their magic.
Rob and his Differential GPS (otherwise known as his ‘Gandalf staff’) mapping a house on the southern side of the River Coe near Achtriachtan farm (whose early 19th-century barn can be seen in the background)
One more gap that needed filling was round the ‘Summerhouse of MacIain’ up in Gleann Leac na Muidhe. While Eddie and Amy were baling the water out of their test trenches in the kitchen end of the Summerhouse, Katie, Rob and I mapped the various enclosures and walls round it to give an idea of the landscape that MacIain and his family and entourage lived in during the summers.
Rob and Katie (if you look hard enough) mapping enclosure walls near the Summerhouse
It was here that we had our major breakthrough – which made me kick myself for not realising it in previous seasons. Those single lines of stones, that we had seen at Achtriachtan and Achnambeithach as well as here, were clearly associated with later 19th-century wire fences. They made a solid base to the fence so the sheep couldn’t scrabble through the mud under the lowest wire.
The line of stones that is clearly the base for a wire fence
The moral of the story? Keep going back into the landscape. Every time you learn something new.
– Professor Michael Given
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