Dun Flodigarry broch, Skye
Mick Sharp recalls a quest for an Iron Age broch at Dun Flodigarry
A round, flat-topped mound in the walled garden of the Flodigarry Hotel, a Victorian mansion on the north-east coast of Skye, was woven round with tales of the little people and their beguiling music. At 60m above sea level, the fairy mound rides the slalom of spectacular lava landslips running down to the shore from the Quiraing on the Trotternish dolerite ridge. My view looks south from Druim nan Slochd to the croft land of Dunans.
Suspected of being the remains of an Iron Age broch, the site was excavated 1979–82 with funding from Earthwatch, a us- based charity providing paying volunteers for scientific field research. Roger and Gina Martlew ran the project with the enthusiastic support of the hotel owners and staff, archaeologists, American volunteers and Leicester University students.
Brochs are freestanding circular drystone towers similar to the nuraghi of Sardinia, but unique to Scotland: there are over 500, mainly in the north and west. Distinctive features include double concentric walls tied together by horizontal flat stones; a narrow entrance passage with door-checks and an inner court; cells and a spiral stone stair within the walls; and ledges around the inner wall which supported timbers. Brochs may have stood up to 12m high, possibly over 15m in the case of Mousa, Shetland. Some were built with solid bases, and a few had their ground galleries buttressed or filled with rubble.
At Dun Flodigarry we uncovered an incomplete, double-walled 18m-circuit with a paved and rebated entrance passage at the north-west, along with intramural cells, clay foundations and a pebble floor. Walling survived up to 1.5m high on the lower western arc, but was missing along the top of the sloping outcrop. Finds included Iron Age Hebridean pottery, an inevitable sherd of Roman samian, a stone rotary quern, charcoal and worked flints. Using beach pebbles as hammers to knock thin stones into the walls, we created the same marks we could see on Iron Age pebbles. Four people moved large stones with a sling of wooden poles and ropes. One very large example was replaced in the outer wall face using a makeshift sheerlegs. Dun Flodigarry was scheduled in February 2000: an unfinished, first-century- ad groundgalleried broch best fitted the evidence.
Butchered animal bones, topped by over 1,200 limpet shells, lay in the entrance. We cooked fresh limpets in various camp-fire ways, but they remained stubbornly chewy. Ann Woods fired experimental pottery using local clays in wood, peat and turf clamps: ceramics included a fine collared urn, a gravy boat and a chipmunk. American-style “Bar- b-qs” were held, especially for the fourth of July. One morning an American colonial flag was raised over the broch and the British contingent woke to burstingballoon “gunshots”. Useful expressions like schuky darn were learned, lasting friendships made. Not all the food was to American tastes: too many tatties and, unused to fresh Jersey milk, some were suspicious of the pale “custard”. One enthusiastic convert burst into the hotel kitchen declaring: “I’m an American, give me some cream.”