Monument record 931 - EILEANN MALEIT, VALLAY STRAND, NORTH UIST

NF77SE 5 7748 7388.

(NF 7748 7388) Aisled round house (L Scott 1948; Visible on RAF air photograph 540/509: pt II: 4050-1: flown 23 May 1951), Eileann Maleit, about 1/4 mile E of Cnoc a'Comhdhalach and 30 yards from the shore, on a tidal islet connected with the mainland by a causeway. There were attached structures also on the west but these cannot now be disentangled. The building has been quarried and reduced in height. (E Beveridge 1911 and L Scott 1948)
Some finds are in the NMAS.
E Beveridge 1911; L Scott 1948; Proc Soc Antiq Scot 1912 and 1922.

The remains of this aisled round house are as described and planned above. The causeway is submerged at high tide.
Surveyed at 1/10,560.
Visited by OS (W D J) 20 June 1965.

NF 7748 7388 Small scale excavations were carried out on the tidal islet settlement of Eilean Maleit, originally excavated by Beveridge in the early part of this century. The excavations were designed to test the hypothesis that the site represented a wheelhouse built into an earlier Atlantic roundhouse or broch. It was hoped that as at the nearby Sollas wheelhouse, Beveridge had left unexcavated deposits in situ.
Two of the wheelhouse bays were re-excavated and a section was excavated through the wall in an attempt to identify any pre-wheelhouse walling. It was quickly discovered that, in the re-excavated areas, Beveridge had removed archaeological deposits down to decayed bedrock, apart from those under the wheelhouse piers and a small truncated pit within one of the bays. The section through the wall confirmed that the wheelhouse was a secondary structure, revetting dumped occupation material and sealing an earlier structure when the wheelhouse was built suggests the passage of a considerable period of time between the occupation of the two structures. Finds were restricted to a small pottery assemblage and included two stratified sherds with applied wavy cordons from the wheelhouse wall core and the pit interior.
I Armit 1995.

Eilean Maleit is a rocky islet connected to the shore by a stone causeway c.30m long, which is inaccesible at high tide. A wheelhouse and cellular structures occupying the summit of the islet were investigated by Beveridge ( 1911, 207-9 ). The site can thus be regarded as part of the local settlement pattern during the late first millenium BC and early first millenium AD. The structure was re-surveyed and partly re-excavated in 1995 ( Armit forth ), in order to determine if the wheelhouse was the primary structure at this location, or whether it had been built into an earlier Atlantic roundhouse. Although most deposits had been removed previously by Beveridge in the areas opened in 1995, sufficient remained to demonstrate that the inner face of the wheelhouse wall and an exposed pier were secondary to a series of earlier deposits, presumably associated with an unidentified structure on the same site.
Beveridge ( 1911, 209 ) referred to the presece of former occupation traces on the small islet to the west of Eilean Maleit (NMRS Ref: NF 77 SE 18) - nothing was noted during the current survey.
Dunwell 1997

Erskine Beveridge, 1911, North Uist: its archaeology and topography, 207-9, No. 71 plan and illusts. (Bibliographic reference). SWE12876.

PSAS, 1911-12, Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 335 (Bibliographic reference). SWE9079.

PSAS, 1921-2, Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 16 (Bibliographic reference). SWE9178.

RCAHMS, 1928, The RCAHMCS 9th Report & Inventory: Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles, 88-9, No. 270 (Bibliographic reference). SWE5587.

L Scott, 1948, Proc Prehist Soc, 72 plan (Bibliographic reference). SWE6434.

A Young, 1952-3, Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 96 (Bibliographic reference). SWE8433.

I Armit, 1995e, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland, 107-108 (Bibliographic reference). SWE38858.

Andrew Dunwell, 1998, Vallay Strand Project 1995-7 (Unpublished document). SWE41015.