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Scapa

On a walk from the Knowes of Trotty (closed till 2 p.m. I found out after) to Cuween Hill I saw the barrows on the Hill of Heddle from above Berstane Farm and was finally totally convinced that the features below the Well Park field, occupying the whole of the field below its western edge, could be none other than the remains of barrows. My guess is these are also the ‘new’ find seen by a visiting archaeologist speaker a couple of years back. From the road below very much a jumble of gentle rises, dips and hollows. In appropriate lighting (as with the double ditch/bank of the Hillhead enclosure nearby) it is all so clear from the Orphir road- can you call wild vegetation cropmarks. Coming from Kirkwall this is the fourth field on the east side of the B9148, though it is very obvious. It appears to end at the steep-sided burn, or else its character changes.

Miscellaneous

Scapa
Round Barrow(s)

Correct location for one of the barrow groups tentatively placed under HY41SW 21 (still not 100% certain the remaining group, a circular group of ten that included 3 large ones, shouldn’t be associated with the other “farm of Wideford in St.Ola” at HY4608 rather than Wideford Hill farm). Petrie “examined” a group of fourteen barrows, from one of which came a stone pestle/crusher. These would seem to be seperate from another barrow seen by him “near the shore of the Bay of Scapa” whose primary internment was a cist large enough to contain a sitting skeleton !

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