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Brough,broch 100m WSW of,Burraland

A Scheduled Monument in Shetland West, Shetland Islands

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Coordinates

Latitude: 60.2303 / 60°13'49"N

Longitude: -1.601 / 1°36'3"W

OS Eastings: 422201

OS Northings: 1149621

OS Grid: HU222496

Mapcode National: GBR Q1DP.P5C

Mapcode Global: XHD2T.J4T4

Entry Name: Brough,broch 100m WSW of,Burraland

Scheduled Date: 22 January 1993

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Source ID: SM5539

Schedule Class: Cultural

Category: Prehistoric domestic and defensive: broch

Location: Walls and Sandness

County: Shetland Islands

Electoral Ward: Shetland West

Traditional County: Shetland

Description

The monument consists of the remains of a broch on a promontory on the E side of Loch of Breibister. The broch is reduced to a low stony mound, surrounded by the remains of a double stone-faced rampart with an intervening ditch. The outworks are particularly well-preserved to the N of the broch, where the ramparts stand up to 1m high and 3m across.

The flat-bottomed ditch is in places cut into the bedrock, and if loch levels in the Iron Age were similar to modern times, would have been either water- filled or very boggy. Traces of a causeway can be seen leading across the ditch. The area to be scheduled is irregular, bounded in part by the shore of the loch and elsewhere by a line 10m outside the outer lip of the ditch, as marked in red on the accompanying map.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

The monument is of national importance as an example of a broch with unusual outer defences. Although the broch and its defences are themselves much reduced, the waterlogged nature of the ditch may offer important opportunities, through excavation and analysis, to study rarely-preserved organic material relating to the Iron Age economy and environment.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography

RCAHMS records the monument as HU24NW 1.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

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