Monument record 550 - DUN NA CILLE, BARRA

NF60SW 2 6477 0167.

(NF 6477 0167) Dun na Cille (NR)
OS 6"map, Inverness-shire, 2nd ed., (1904)

Dun na Cille: the Commission found no trace of this in 1915, but Young notes that the cemetery wall round St Brendan's Chapel (NF60SW 1) includes the base of a round tower, all that can now be traced of Dun na Cille, of massive build (which she classifies as a dun), with a square opening which gives onto the sloch below.
RCAHMS 1928.

The remains of this dun or broch comprise an amorphous mound of turf-covered stones abutting on the rounded wall at the SE corner of the graveyard. The outer face of the base of the structure can be traced on the N and W, and the SE perimeter still exists as two or three courses of massive stone blocks forming the base of the cemetery wall.
At the base of this wall (on the E side of the structure) is a small square opening, 0.7m wide, probably the original entrance.
The structure would appear to have been sub-circular, with a diameter of c 15.7m, but it was not possible to measure the width of the wall, and without excavation it is impossible to decide whether it is a broch or dun.
Surveyed at 1/10,560.
Visited by OS (W D J) 17 May 1965.

B4 1.Port na Cille
Site Type: Broch, midden, enclosure
A battered well constructed stone wall swings in an arc of about 18 m diam. below the wall of the modern cemetery, which actually follows the line of this earlier wall and uses it as a foundation. Inside the cemetery at this point there is a substantial mound as the buried remains of a broch,situated immediatly overlooking the natural dyke which forms a protected harbourage at this point on the headland. Between the broch and the edge of the dyke are the remains of a bank which curve westwards, and make an enclosure around the broch on the side, with a possible entrance to the west. To the north of the broch, exposed in the steep and eroding edge of the machair, is a midden.We recovered fifteen reddish-brown gritty handmade sherds, one with an applied and imprssed cordon, probably of the early first millenium AD. We also found limpet shells, fragments of butchered animal bone, teeth of sheep and pig, and five fish vertebra.
Branigan and Grattan 1998.

Also in Branigan and Foster 2000, 27

RCAHMS, 1928, The RCAHMCS 9th Report & Inventory: Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles, 137, No. 469 (Bibliographic reference). SWE5587.

A Young, 1955-6a, Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 293 (Bibliographic reference). SWE8434.

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.