Description

The monument comprises a group of turf-built structures of later medieval or post-medieval date, situated along a low ridge covered in heather approximately 300m S of the main modern road at Innesbrae and to the west of the Stripe of Clashandail burn. None of the structures appear on the Ordnance Survey First Edition map (1870), suggesting that they had fallen out of use by this date.

Four rectangular and sub-rectangular turf-built buildings survive to a height of about 0.3m. The three largest buildings are orientated NNE-SSW. The interiors of the two southern buildings have been dug into the slope of the ridge and have internal compartments. The southernmost building has four compartments and an outshot attached on its NE side. The buildings lie approximately 750m to the SW of a deserted township and may represent the remains of a shieling site used by the township's inhabitants.

The area to be scheduled is sub-rectangular on plan, to include the buildings and an area around and between the buildings in which evidence relating to their construction and use may survive, as shown in red on the accompanying map.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

Cultural Significance

The monument's archaeological significance can be expressed as follows:

Intrinsic characteristics: The monument is a well-preserved, archaeological site. It is unexcavated and therefore has the potential to provide high quality archaeological evidence of the use, construction and abandonment of the buildings.

Contextual characteristics: The site is a good example of a type known throughout Scotland but which has been the subject of relatively little archaeological research to date. It forms part of the wider historic landscape of the late medieval and pre-Improvement rural communities in the Strathdon area and may represent the remains of a shieling site used by the inhabitants of a nearby deserted township. It therefore has the potential to illuminate the practice of transhumance in the medieval and later rural communities.

Associative characteristics: The monument is the product of pre-Improvement agricultural and transhumance practices and demonstrates the settlement and economy of Scotland's rural population during the later medieval and post-medieval period. Sites such as this are increasingly rare monuments to a way of life and a once much larger rural population swept away by the 18th- and early 19th-century Clearances.

National Importance: The monument is of national importance because it has an inherent potential to make a significant addition to the understanding of the past, in particular the function and construction of rural vernacular architecture, settlement and economy of later medieval and post-medieval Strathdon. Its relatively good preservation enhances this potential. The loss of this example would affect our ability to understand the later medieval and post-medieval period of rural pre-Improvement Scotland, which preserves tangible evidence of the way of life prior to the age of agricultural improvement.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography

RCAHMS records this site as NJ42SW 9.

References:

RCAHMS 2007, IN THE SHADOW OF BENNACHIE: THE FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY OF DONSIDE, ABERDEENSHIRE, Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland