Monument record 985 - UAMH IOSAL, USINISH, SOUTH UIST

NF83SW 2 8433 3326.

A semi-subterranean building first described by Thomas (who is an authority for the published site) in 1867, which, though called an earth house by the RCAHMS in June 1915 (RCAHMS 1928), appears from its plan to be a wheel house with integral earth house, lies on the north side of Glen Usinish on a steep hillside some 100 yards south of the precipitous face of MacIadh nh'Uamba.
Thomas (F W L Thomas 1870) says that the inner or nothern side of the wheelhouse had been built on a smallterrace scooped out of the hillside, while the outer side had been built up to it from the ground. The RCAHMS described this southern side as being a tumble of boulders about 2ft high, inside which had been built a circular bee hive shaped cell 4 1/2ft in diameter and about 3ft high, south of which was a short section of what seemed to have been a straight wall.
In 1915 the wheel house remained as a circular building about 26ft in diameter internally, with small dominical cells ranged around its inside wall and divided from one another by radiating stone walls. These walls had been about 4ft high in 1867 but even the best was reduced by 1915 to a height of 2ft 9ins. Only three of the cells, with walls rising to 5 1/2ft remained in 1915, though Thomas described another to the west with two more wall recesses than were noted by the RCAHM.
The earth house was entered by a lintelled doorway in the centre of the north wall of the wheel house. It was 2ft in length and 1ft 9ins square and opened, on the left, into a lintelled passage about 2ft 6ins to 2ft 9ins high, except where it expanded in a corbelled cell 7 1/2ft high; while on the right of the doorway was a short chamber 2ft 3ins in height.
F W L Thomas 1870; RCAHMS 1928; Name Book 1876.

NF 8437 3325. This feature, an aisled wheel-house with earthouse, is as planned by the RCAHMS and its condition would appear to have deteriorated little since their visit. Close to the NW side is an external chamber 1.5m in diameter.
Surveyed at 1:10560.
Visited by OS (E G C) 15 May 1965.

F W L Thomas, 1866-8, Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 165-7 illust (Bibliographic reference). SWE7733.

RCAHMS, 1928, The RCAHMCS 9th Report & Inventory: Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles, 116-18, Nos. 395 and 396 (Bibliographic reference). SWE5587.

Name Book (County), 1998, Name Books of the Ordnance Survey, Book No. 13, 51 (Unpublished document). SWE4254.