After visiting the Fossil Museum (with its very nice cafe) and the amazing Italian Chapel (a ‘must see’) I wanted to take a quick look at this ‘ancient village’.
In truth all I saw was a lumpy / bumpy field. I wasn’t expecting much else so I wasn’t disappointed.
This day though I went near high tide there was plenty of beach and I went down as far as the big WW2 structure. There is a big ole square chunk out of the cliff that had presumably been a quarry, though the bottom is turf now. Climbed up this and found room-sized rectangular depressions. As I went back to No.1 Barrier there seem to be loads of these. Reminded me of the Broch of Lingro settlement which abided beside a stretch of coast from a rectangular bite of cliff to the Scapa Distillery burn. Except that chunk is natural. Perhaps some of the depressions are from the Barrier building period anyway. Also lots of interesting lumps and bumps various sorts, sizes and materials.
CANMORE gives this prehistoric settlement as 450m WSW of the Italian Chapel (nothing else known). More usefully it is by the shore the other side of the main road and can be sighted along the side road to the chapel. There must be an easier way in than over the blocks at the end of Churchill Barrier Number One, which was the way I chose for reasons of time - having clambered atop the blocks I saw some stones had been placed on the coastal side of one for such a purpose.
I must admit my hopes were low, maybe a few slight bumps if I was lucky. Proceeding along the coastline there was a flattened area 'paved' by flat stones and a few sticking up slightly. At the time because I came upon them so quickly I put them down to being either purely geological or of recent agricultural origin but after what came after I am more open to a dfferent interpretatation. The very next thing was two platforms each 4-5m across, with stones at the sides and back giving them a wedge shape several inches high at the rear. Very nice. Seeing more stones going across the edge of the low cliff I went down onto the beach for a quick shufty. Oh, glory be, what a sight, the cliff hereabouts was a housewall composed of a multitude of rounded stones about the size of a housebrick at most, course after course. All told the exposed section could be made out for 14m, tapering off into indistinction either side. It may be that it does continue erratically over an even longer portion of the cliff, though the cliff-face shortly goes down to sea-level at the left. The main central portion that first took my fancy is the 4m to the right of the only orthostat in the section. Neolithic or at the least Bronze Age
Coming back up I went towards a small modern structure roadside to see if there was another way out there. There wasn't but I did pass a couple of depressions with a few smaa stones in that might be something. And then a couple of linear humps, short but suggestive - though what of I'm no sure.
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Posted by wideford
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