Description

The monument was first scheduled in 1991, and the protected area is being extended to cover additional important remains identified by recent fieldwork. The monument comprises an area including numerous cairns and mounds, enclosures formed by banks, a round house, mounds containing houses and other settlement remains, field systems and ancient anthropogenic soils.

The area includes six large, turf-covered artificial mounds, several denuded sandy stony banks, an enclosure and over 50 smaller mounds. Of the large mounds one may be a broch. It survives as a mound about 30.0m in diameter and 1.2m high with a rim of stony material around its top enclosing a slight hollow about 12.0m in diameter. Another of these mounds, of earth and stones, measures about 15.0m in diameter and 0.8m high and is a possibly a cairn.

Another mound measures about 33.0m in diameter with a smaller mound about 11.0m in diameter surmounting it, making a total height of 2.8m. Several upright slabs protrude through the turf. Another mound measures about 22.0m in diameter and 1.1m high. Shelly Knowe is a crescentic-shaped mound, 1.8m high. It is a settlement site. Another mound, about 12.0m in diameter and 0.8m high displays a content of stone.

The sandy stony banks, spread to about 3.0m and 0.4m in height, incorporate at least 11 smaller stony mounds, averaging 7.0m in diameter. Within the east side of the enclosure is the western arc of an apparently once circular bank and a turf-covered mound about 9.5m in diameter and 0.6m high. The area covered by the scheduling also includes a rectangular area about 55.0m N-S by 40.0m E-W, bounded by sandy heaps which may conceal structures.

Both within and outside the area enclosed by the stony banks and the sea are at least 50 turf-covered mounds from 6.0m to 12.0m in diameter. Some are almost certainly natural sandy knolls, but others may be cairns or field clearance heaps. There are also traces of comparatively recent cultivation in the area.

The area of the extended scheduling comprises four separate sub-areas: the previously scheduled area measuring about 740m N-S by up to 340m E-W bounded to north and east by the high water mark; a circular area 100m in diameter centred on the centre of Shelly Knowe; an oval area measuring 100m N-S by 60m E-W centred some 300m WSW of Shelly Knowe and containing a settlement site and nearby layers of ancient man-made soils and other artificial features;

and a trapezoidal area containing a mound, banks and layers of ancient man-made soils bounded to the north by the high water mark of ordinary spring tides, its east side (on the west side of and excluding a drain) measuring 400m N-S, its south side measuring 275m E-W and its west side (on the east side of and excluding a drain) measuring 400m NNE-SSW, all as shown in red on the accompanying map extract.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

The importance of the area lies in its richness, the rarity of survival of similar prehistoric landscapes on calcareous sand, and in its representativeness of what is known to have been common before agricultural improvement in Orkney and by extension other Scottish agricultural counties. The individual components of the complex merit scheduling as of national importance. The group, despite recent damage, is outstandingly important to the themes of prehistoric land management, relationship of burial cairns to agricultural systems, and to prehistoric settlement.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography

RCAHMS records the monument HY 74 NE 1.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland