Monument record 1638 - LEDAIG, BARRA

NL69NE 9 675 973

S9: Rectangular house foundations and an adjacent stone-built pen. The house foundations are relatively narrow (c0.75m), and measure 8.6 m x 5.3 m; there is no trace of a chimney. The pen, is 6 m x 3.5 m. There may be a third rectangular structure N of the house beneath ferns, and there is a butressed platform on a small headland S of the house.
A stream runs close to the house on the W, and beyond the stream is a major 'sheep' wall of turf and stone which runs for almost a kilometre up the valley and over into Garygall.
Local oral tradition claims that the house was built by Dermot O'Neil from Co.Sligo, shipwrecked on Barra c. 1780-90 and given this land by McNeil of Barra. When O'Neil subsequently married a local woman some years later he abandoned this house.
K Branigan 1991; NMRS MS/595/6, 4-5

Two unroofed buildings are depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Inverness-shire, Hebrides, Barra etc. 1880, sheet lxiv) and on the current edition of the OS 1:10000 map (1971).
Information from RCAHMS (SAH) 5 June 1997

16. Ben Orosay (S9)
Site type: Blackhouse? and pen
An oblong building 8.6 x 5.3 m, probably a blackhouse but with thinner walls than usual. South of the house is a roughly built pen 5.9 x 3.5 m, and there are surface indications of other structures to the north of the house. Local oral tradition claims that the house was built by an Irishman, Dermot O'Neil and used c. 1780-1810.
Branigan and Grattan 1998, 23.

Also in Branigan and Foster 2000, 19

K Branigan, 1991, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland, 75-6 (Bibliographic reference). SWE18556.

Keith Branigan & John Grattan, 1998, Coastal Assessment Survey Barra and Vatersay (Bibliographic reference). SWE41024.

Keith Branigan & Patrick Foster, 2000, From Barra to Berneray: Archaeological Survey and Excavation in the Southern Isles ... (Bibliographic reference). SWE41033.