Inchberry Farm and Steading, near Beauly – A Relationship with Serendipity

by Roland Spencer-Jones

A new report entitled Inchberry – a settlement, a farm, a steading and a family has just been posted to the NOSAS website. It describes the history of a farm and steading at Inchberry, on the south side of the Beauly Firth. What was remarkable about the work that went into the report was that serendipity provided most of the information, rather than systematic archival research. That serendipity was in turn a product of relationships built up over many years. How often a chance encounter or a chance remark opens a door into new understanding or knowledge. Let’s see how it happened with Inchberry….

Serendipity One

The Lovat Estate Office in Beauly (c. NOSAS)

Out of the blue, on 8^th March 2021 the Director of the Lovat Highlands Estate, Iain Shepherd, emailed me to say that there were some interesting graffiti on the walls of a steading at Inchberry and would I like to see them. I had got to know Iain well in 2018 when I was able to work on the Lovat map archive, at that time housed in the Estate Office in the middle of Beauly. The Estate then generously funded the digital scanning of all the maps in the archive, which were subsequently uploaded to the National Library of Scotland website. A relationship was born, which we had both appreciated since.

Graffiti of HMS Hood (c. Lovat Highland Estates)

Graffiti of a Spitfire (c. Lovat Highland Estates)

My Highland Adventure: Diving Loch Achilty Crannog and HMS Natal

by Duncan Ross

During lockdown, apart from eating too many pancakes, NASAC (Nautical Archaeology Society affiliated diving club) member Duncan Ross set himself a grand future task of visiting different kinds of underwater archaeological sites around Britain. This summer he managed to add a couple of unique Scottish sites to his gradually-expanding list.

After around two years of communication, in August 2022 I was invited to help out on a crannog investigation in the fairly anonymous Loch Achilty, just a little north of Inverness city. Assisting North of Scotland Archaeology Society (NOSAS) member Richard Guest and his intrepid team, I spent two days at a most-tranquil setting scuba diving, investigating, recording and taking photos and film of a site that could be anything from a couple of hundred years to a couple of thousand years old. 

Richard Guest explores mysterious timber and rocks around the Loch Achilty crannog: Image: Duncan Ross

Crannogs are a fairly unchartered area in the field of archaeology, and most questions about their creation and the purpose of their locations within lochs remain unanswered and open to speculation. All that usually remains is an artificial island of stones piled on top of one another – artefacts and human traces are frustratingly rare, as are diagnostic patterns that could lead to a method of classification. The crannog centre at Loch Tay focuses on the iron age roundhouse model that was discovered there, but little proof exists that others were constructed and utilised in the same way. The depth of the Loch Achilty crannog, previously unrecorded, is an ultra-accessible 2.5 metres. Needless to say, dive times were extremely long for Richard and myself.

Richard Guest and Duncan Ross prepare to place garden canes around the crannog to aid with measurements. Image: Elizabeth Blackburn

Raigmore Hospital, Inverness: From EMS to NHS

by Marion Ruscoe

Raigmore Hospital, 1948 © HES (Aerofilms Collection)

Raigmore Hospital was erected as part of the Emergency Medical Scheme (EMS) on part of  the Raigmore estate and opened in 1941.  The Emergency Medical Scheme was established to provide adequate medical facilities for expected wartime casualties and Raigmore was one of seven new hospitals built during the war.  They were all built to a standard design, but because of restrictions in the use of timber and steel, the buildings at Raigmore were brick, single storey and flat roofed.  An aerial photograph, taken in 1948, of the new hospital shows the layout to the south of Raigmore House on the east side of Inverness.   There were 16 individual wards and an isolation unit providing about 670 beds.  Staff accommodation was provided at the north-west corner of the site and a further collection of individual blocks between the staff accommodation and the wards housed administration, kitchens, dining rooms, laboratories and other services.

After the war, Raigmore continued to provide hospital services to Inverness and the surrounding area along with, principally, the R.N.I., Culduthel Hospital and Hilton Hospital but by the 1960s the facilities in Inverness were not meeting modern needs and in 1962 plans for a new general hospital to serve Inverness were put in place.   As an EMS hospital Raigmore was never designed to last for ever.  By 1966 work had begun on the new hospital for the Highlands and it was decided that it had to be at Raigmore, because that was where there was enough space to develop the facilities.  Phase 1 of the development was opened in 1970.  It incorporated the Outpatients Department, laboratories, pharmacy, physiotherapy and records.  Dr. James Bruce, who in 1947 was appointed consultant biochemist, finally got the new laboratory that he was promised at interview.

An aerial view of the hospital in 1972 shows Phase 1 at the bottom of the photo, but the original hospital buildings are still there and in use.  When comparing this view with the earlier view taken in 1948 the only other differences are that the walled garden has become part of the hospital car park, and the College of Nursing has been built to the right of the wards.

A Year of Highland Archaeology

by James McComas (NOSAS)

A Year of Highland Archaeology book cover, showing Tarradale Through Time excavation trench with the settings of a possible stone hut. The same trench yielded several rare antler tools.

NOSAS has just published A Year of Highland Archaeology: A Collection of the Projects and Activities of the North of Scotland Archaeological Society . This new book includes 10 articles which explore some of the diverse recent projects that we has been involved with. These range from large scale funded excavations through to group surveys and small scale research projects. They highlight Highland locations from the west to the east coast, from Speyside to Sutherland.

Projects featured include the lottery funded Tarradale Through Time Project, which in 2017 saw 6000 year old antler tools uncovered near Muir of Ord on the Black Isle.  These very rare finds included the remains of a harpoon point and two “T axes” left behind by hunter gatherers on the shores of the Beauly Firth. The T axes are two of only five examples so far known in the whole of Scotland. The trench where these were found also tantalisingly revealed the possible stone setting of a Mesolithic hut. Tarradale Through Time continues in Autumn 2019 with the excavation of potentially one of the largest barrow cemeteries in Scotland (further information at www.tarradalethroughtime.co.uk).

One of rare antler “T axes” found during Tarradale Through Time’s 2017 excavations.

Another chapter focuses on Torvean Hillfort, a neglected structure on the edge of Inverness. Torvean was perhaps constructed more than 2000 years ago, but it is today sadly under threat from persistent trail bike damage. A different chapter tells the much more positive story of how a collection of 400 historic maps relating to the Lovat Highland Estates, covering extensive areas west of Inverness, have now been scanned and made available online.

Map of Torvean Hillfort, Inverness showing destructive trail bike tracks

A different chapter still focuses on the NOSAS’s work with Scotland’s Rock Art Project. ScRAP aims to log as many as possible of the mysterious carved “cup marks” which appear on Scotland’s boulders and rock faces over a 5 year project. The precise date of these carvings, of which there are many good examples in the Highlands, is unknown but they are thought to have been mainly created in the Neolithic period around 6,000 to 4,000 years ago. Other archaeological locations explored in the book include Ormond Castle in Avoch, a prehistoric roundhouse landscape in Glen Urquhart, and Gruinard Island in Wester Ross.

3D Photogrammetry model of cup marked stone at Kinmylies, Inverness

Initiating CAERoS: Coastal Archaeology and Erosion in Wester Ross

by Stephanie Piper, Newcastle University (stephanie.piper@newcastle.ac.uk)

In April 2019 myself, two Master’s students from Newcastle University – Callum Hardman and Holly Holmes, and Paco Martínez-Sevilla, a colleague from Durham University, based ourselves in Poolewe to begin a week-long walk-over survey of the coastline around Loch Ewe. The aims of the survey were to:

1. Establish the potential of eroding coastlines to yield early prehistoric sites in the north-west Highlands.
2. Contribute to active monitoring of archaeological sites at risk of erosion.

Why were we drawn to this remote part of the Scottish Highlands? Precisely because it is remote! The evidence for early prehistoric occupation is sparse across much of the Highland region. For example, there is no evidence for Mesolithic occupation along the coast between Redpoint, in Gairloch parish, and Smoo Cave, Durness parish (although this has not been fully confirmed). By contrast, the coasts around the Inner Sound of Skye and Applecross were intensively surveyed by the Scotland’s First Settlers project from 1998. The project identified over 130 new archaeological sites, including the Mesolithic rockshelter site at Sand, Applecross. We felt sure that the absence of sites to the north was due to a lack of research, primarily because of the remoteness of the region and lack of ‘visible’ archaeology, rather than an absence of people in the past. CAERoS was therefore initiated to investigate the next stretch of coastline, north of where Scotland’s First Settlers had finished and with the hope of finding further evidence for Mesolithic coastal occupation.

As this was just the start, our methodology was simple: walk, and look. I spent several years during my postgraduate degrees working on a project in the Western Isles with Durham University. During the field seasons, we identified a number of Mesolithic sites exposed by coastal erosion (two on Harris, and three around the Bhaltos peninsula in Lewis). Because early prehistoric sites are often deeply buried under peat or machair, they are invisible to traditional means of initial identification such as a field-walking, and are so ephemeral they rarely respond to geophysics. The destruction caused by erosive processes therefore provides opportunities to investigate hidden archaeology, including early buried landscapes. This then, was to be our ‘window’ to the past, and we struck out across the headlands to observe and record any archaeology within c.50m of the coastline using the ShoreUpdate App, developed by the Scotland’s Coastal Heritage at Risk project (SCHARP).

Fig.1 Exploring the circular stone structures and raised beach deposits at An Sean Inbhir

On the first day, we walked west, covering the stretch from Cove Battery to Camas Mor. We noted several sites along the way, including circular stone structures and modern fisherman’s bothies at An Sean Inbhir (Fig.1), a turf-covered wall at NG763921, which is probably associated with the abandoned township and head dyke at Camustrolvaig, and a sheepfold built against a rocky outcrop at NG805925. The building recorded at Camas A’Chall wasn’t identified, nor does it appear on the current OS map. By far the most interesting aspect of this stretch was the World War II memorial and three abandoned lifeboats (centred on the memorial at NG796926, Fig. 2). The memorial is in commemoration of those who lost their lives after the American Liberty Ship USS William H. Welch ran aground at Foura Island, on 26th February 1944. The plaque is also dedicated to local community members who were involved in the rescue efforts. The plaque does not appear in the HER and the abandoned lifeboats are at serious risk, situated in the intertidal zone. These have been logged with SCHARP who are very interested in incorporating them into a future project. If anyone happens to be in the area and visit them, it would be worthwhile continuing to take photographs of their condition.

Fig.2 The memorial at Cove, and barely-surviving lifeboats (midground, left)

A Little Piece of Coppice at Coulmore, Formerly on the Redcastle Estate

By Jonathan Wordsworth

Cycling regularly along the north shore of the Beauly Firth from North Kessock to Tarradale, I have noted just past Coulmore Point a small patch of woodland with a collection of twisted multi-stemmed trees.  Consisting predominantly of oak but with a mixture of species including ash and beech, the trees are widely spaced and used as shelter by stock grazing the field above.  As a result the wood has an open and sparse aspect.

The curving and multiple stems of the trees in the woodland show that this is a rare survival for this area of a former coppiced woodland, where the stems were cut down to  supply timber on a regular cycle of  15-20 years.

Coulmore and the woodland copse shown on current Bing aerial photography.  Note the caravan park at bottom right of photograph to help locate the woodland site.

Earlier maps show it was one of two similar sized copses set beside the road and on the edge of the raised beach.  They are both shown as wooded on the land utilisation survey of the 1930s shown below, though the western copse has now disappeared.

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/index.html

A Lonely Linear Line of Communication

by Meryl Marshall (NOSAS)

On a recent hillwalk in the remote hills to the south of Scatwell/Strathconon, we came across a line of derelict telephone poles. The poles “marched” (with various atitudes!) over the hill towards Loch Orrin; an unusual feature at an altitude of between 330m and 430m – why were they there? what was their purpose? and when? We were keen to find out.

Lines of telephone poles are, or were at one time, a bit of a blight on the landscape but now we see fewer of them and they are rapidly becoming a “thing of the past” as more phone lines are buried underground. One could argue that they are not of archaeological importance, but they are certainly part of our history. We decided to record these poles and investigate.

The poles are located 4kms south of Scatwell House and stretch for c1.5kms from Loch an Fheoir (NE end GR – NH 3939 5326) to Loch Aradaidh (SW end – NH 3862 5255), following the line of the well-made estate track from Scatwell over to Glen Orrin. Ten disused poles in various states of preservation were seen, most were upright but some had fallen and others were at jaunty angles. The poles are of timber and generally 12cms in diameter and up to 5m in height; many had wire stays. Most had a single step-iron near the top and metal discs with identification numerals. Only one had a timber cross-piece with ceramic insulators near the top, all however had the notch for the cross-piece.

Bobbin Mills in the North of Scotland

by Joanna Gilliatt (Woodland Heritage Researcher, Ancient Woodland Restoration Project)

Introduction

Back in July 2015 there was a NOSAS blog post about the South Kinrara Bobbin Mill, which included pictures of the mill, showed its location on the 1st edition OS map, and identified who ran the mill and when.

Coincidentally, it was this very bobbin mill which had set me off on researching bobbin mills in the north of Scotland, back in August 2014. I had just started work as a volunteer researcher with the Woodland Trust’s Ancient Woodland Restoration project and had spotted the South Kinrara Bobbin Mill on the 1st edition OS map, and decided to find out more about it.

NLS, Ordnance Survey http://maps.nls.uk/view/75135349

Now I am nearing the end of my bobbin mill research, 3½ years later, so this is a good time to provide an update on my findings.

The Ancient Woodland Restoration project

Ancient woodlands are areas which are shown having woodland cover on the earliest maps (1750 in Scotland) and have had woodland cover continuously ever since. As a result of their longevity, these woodlands tend to have a strong natural and cultural heritage and they provide a home for a complex range of wildlife, including rare species of both plants and animals, with some of these species found exclusively on ancient woodland sites.

Ancient Woodland is increasingly under threat, and the aim of the Ancient Woodland Restoration project (which ran from 2014 to March 2018) was to work to restore areas of ancient woodland which were planted with non-native conifers in the period after the 2nd World War – areas known as PAWS (Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites).

www.woodlandtrust.org.uk

In ten priority areas across the UK, including two in Scotland, Project Officers worked to advise owners and managers about the special characteristics of their woodland, discussed the need for restoration and how to undertake it, and then supported the landowners and managers through the process of restoration.

Volunteer researchers were also involved, as part of the Woodland Heritage strand of the project, with the aim of contributing towards the body of knowledge about the history and cultural significance of our ancient woodlands.

In Scotland ancient woodland is normally considered to consist of remnants of the Caledonian pine forest, with the predominant species being Scots pine. However, upland birch woods contribute 29% of native woodlands in Scotland and many of these upland sites are ancient birch woods. So that’s where my research comes in – contributing to knowledge about the history and cultural significance of the birch woods.

As I come towards the end of my research, I now know that South Kinrara was just one of 88 bobbin mills – and other turning mills which made bobbins – which operated in the north of Scotland (loosely defined as north of Perth) over the 150 years between 1830 and 1980.

Bobbins from Stott Park Bobbin Mill – hazel, birch ash, rowan and alder

Surveying Isle Ewe, Wester Ross

by Anne MacInnes (NOSAS)

Aerial of Isle Ewe from Canmore

Isle Ewe is centred on NG 85046 88444 and lies within Loch Ewe just off the coast at Aultbea.

It was surveyed as part of an ongoing project to survey islands in the Gairloch parish area that have been inhabited. It is the largest of these islands comprising 764 acres and stretching roughly two miles from NW to SE. It is an island of two halves due to the geology. The NW consisting of Torridonian sandstone is higher, rockier with rough uncultivated grazing, whereas the SE consisting of deposited New Red sandstone has gentler contours with  improved arable pasture. The SE is also sheltered from the prevailing NW winds.

The earliest reference that I could find about the island was from 1583 when Nicolay refers to Loch Ew and the island. There are various references after this with differing spellings and Roy’s map of 1747 shows two settlements on the island. The island has been settled since the bronze/iron age as I found 5 roundhouses on the island and there could be more as the N end of the island is covered with rank heather overlying deep moss. At times it felt like I was swimming across the landscape, about to disappear never to be found.

Roy Map Isle Ewe

The island is still inhabited by the Grant family without whose help the survey would not have happened.

The full report on the survey can be found on the NOSAS website under ‘past surveys and reports’ so rather than repeat everything I will highlight some of my favourite moments.

The logistics of getting to the island involved constant communication with the Grants about the weather and once on the island a watchful eye was kept on the conditions. They picked me up from Aultbea and ferried me across to various landing points depending on where I was surveying which eventually took about ten trips. I find myself still going back as various queries crop up about more sites as they notice the island through different eyes.

Footings of building at N. settlement marked on Roy’s map

Monuments of Remembrance: Inverness War Memorial, Cavell Gardens

by Marion Ruscoe (NOSAS)

In November public focus is on remembrance as we commemorate the dead from conflicts of WW1 onwards and that focus centres on the many war memorials scattered throughout the country.

Inverness War memorial (NH66481 44506; HER MHG15630) is sited at Cavell Gardens on the River Ness and at the east end of the Infirmary Bridge. It consists of a red sandstone Celtic cross on a stepped plinth with two walls extending to either side with panels containing plaques with the names of the dead of conflicts from WW1. The wings have terminal pillars surmounted by lamps. The memorial was designed by J. Hinton Gall and carved by D & A Davidson of Academy Street.

The best view of the memorial is from the opposite bank of the river

The Burgh Coat of Arms is carved on the front of the plinth below the shaft of the cross, and below that is the inscription:

TO THE
GLORIOUS MEMORY
OF THE MEN OF THE BURGH
AND PARISH OF INVERNESS
WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES
IN THE GREAT WAR
1914-1918