Monument record 545 - BALNACRAIG, BORVE, BARRA

NF60SE 6 6762 0120.

(NF 6762 0120) Dun (NR)
OS 6"map, Inverness-shire, 2nd ed., (1904)

A ruined chambered long cairn lies near the head of a small valley and is alingned north/south with the wider and higher end (about 10ft high) to the south. The edges are difficult to define: the length is about 190ft, the width at the south end about 85ft, tapering gradually then sharply to the north end.
A number of upright stones, on the top of the cairn, form the chamber, but the plan is difficult to define. About 42ft from the south edge a large slab, set transversly to the main axis, projects 4ft and probably represents the west side of a portal, but there is no sign of its partner. The whole site is covered with the foundations of small buildings and enclosures. (A S Henshall 1972)
Scott (L Scott 1947) states in a footnote that the Commission no. 458 (RCAHMS 1928) 'does not appear to be a denuded long cairn and, in its present state at least, indicates a village site with hut circles and other domestic structures'. (He infers that it is similar to Tigh Talamhanta - IA Aisled House, etc. - NF60SE 2).
A S Henshall 1972; RCAHMS 1928; L Scott 1947.

The remains of this chambered long cairn are as described by Henshall. The remains of at least two rectangular buildings and nine shieling-type structures lie along the length of the cairn. They are built of cairn debris, with walls about 0.5m high.
Surveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (W D J) 24 May 1965.

B3 (NF676012) Balnacraig, chambered cairn...Henshall identifies this as a long cairn, but our examination of the site suggested that the cairn is circular, an interpretation shared by hte RCAHMS. The cairn has been heavily robbed in prehistoric and later times, and its original dimensions are unclear. It may have been about 25 m in diameter. Its chamber is still marked by a group of disturbed megalithic slabs ranging from about 1 m to 1.8 m in length. Immediately north of the cairn a mound of stone blocks marks the site of what appears to be a circular stone-founded structure about 12 m in diameter, with a wall up to 1.5 m in width. This too was noted by the RCAHMS and Armit (1992: 162). The quantity and size of the stone blocks, and the dimensions of the structure and its wall, all suggest that this is most likely to be free-standing wheelhouse rather than a thick-walled broch-like structure. Both this structure and the earlier cairn have small subrectangular and oval cabins or shelters built into them and around them. Some of these huts, particularly at the south end of the cairn, are very heavily embedded and are probably of considerable antiquity. One such hut is 2.1 m wide, with two rooms 2.3 m and 3 m long, each with its own door facing south-south-west. It overlies one end of a similar slighlty larger two-roomed hut immediately to the west of it. Other huts are single-roomed structures bwtween 2 m and 3 m 'square'. The least embedded sits on the large circular house, and a second loosely built and relativley recent oval hut lies west of the circular house. The impression is that after the circular house went out of use there was a long sequence of probably intermittent occupation on the site, the latest phases of which were probably no more than shieling huts. The dtae and purpose of the earliest subrectangular structures, however, is uncertain; we suspect they may be of late 1st or early 2nd millenium AD date.
Branigan and Foster 2000, 27

RCAHMS, 1928, The RCAHMCS 9th Report & Inventory: Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles, 135, no. 458 (Bibliographic reference). SWE5587.

Sir L Scott, 1947, Proc Prehist Soc, 4 (Bibliographic reference). SWE6432.

A. Henshall, 1972a, The Chambered Tombs of Scotland, 498, no. UST 3 plan (Bibliographic reference). SWE3275.

Keith Branigan & Patrick Foster, 2000, From Barra to Berneray: Archaeological Survey and Excavation in the Southern Isles ..., 27 (Bibliographic reference). SWE41033.