Walk the Ness Neolithic Trail
Although visitors can’t come to Orkney at present due to the Covid pandemic travel restrictions, we’re all looking forward to a time when things get back to some semblance of normality.… Continue reading
Category: Around the Ness
Around the Ness: Knowes and barrows
“We know little about most of the mounds around the Ring, though the clustering is enough to demonstrate that proximity was important.”… Continue reading
Around the Ness: The Barnhouse Stone
“…on the day itself, at the death of one year and the birth of the next, the sun drops onto the top of the Barnhouse Stone…”
Mark Edmonds.… Continue reading
Around the Ness: Howe, Stromness
“A slightly different form of expansion may be present at Howe, Stromness, Mainland, where two buildings initially interpreted as a stalled tomb and mortuary house, due to the presence of hearths, can be confidently re-interpreted as early Neolithic houses facing one another.”… Continue reading
Around the Ness: The Deepdale Stone
By Sigurd Towrie
Head north along the road parallel to the south-western shore of the Stenness loch and a single standing stone will be clearly visible on high ground to the north-west.… Continue reading
Around the Ness: The Bookan Chambered Cairn
By Sigurd Towrie
At some point in the Neolithic a small, multi-chambered structure was built on high ground at the north-western end of the Ness of Brodgar.… Continue reading
Around the Ness: The Barnhouse Settlement – Structure Eight
“The overall impression of Structure Eight is that of a large building drawing on certain elements of the house and transforming them into monumental proportions.… Continue reading
Around the Ness: The Barnhouse Settlement – House Two
By Sigurd Towrie
For three centuries the Barnhouse settlement was dominated by a structure unlike any of the others in the village.… Continue reading
Around the Ness: The Barnhouse Settlement
“[A]fter the establishment of settlement at Barnhouse the local landscape underwent a fundamental transformation by virtue of the spectacular display of monumentality embodied in Maeshowe, the Stones of Stenness and the groups of standing stones.”… Continue reading
Around the Ness: a hearth in Maeshowe?
Antiquarian sketch has us wondering whether there might be more to the 5,000-year-old chamber than we see today
By Sigurd Towrie
Back in 2016, a nineteenth century sketch had us pondering whether there might be more to Maeshowe than we see today.… Continue reading
Around the Ness: Maeshowe – part two
By Sigurd Towrie
(Part One here)
Based on shared architectural elements, Maeshowe has given its name to a specific class of chambered cairn.… Continue reading
Around the Ness: Maeshowe
“But the most remarkable tumulus in Orkney is situated to the north-east of the Ring of Stenness and is called M’eshoo or Meashowe (sic).”… Continue reading
Around the Ness: The Stones of Stenness – part two
“Each of the remaining pillars is about 18 feet above ground: one was lately thrown down, but has not been broken; three were, in the month of December 1814, torn from the spot on which they had stood for ages, and were shivered to pieces.”… Continue reading
Around the Ness: The Stones of Stenness
“At Stennis, where the Loch is narrowest, in the midle, having a Causey of stons over it for a bridge, there is, at the South end of the bridge, a Round set about with big smooth stons or Flaggs (without anie engraving) of about twenty foot high above ground, six foot broad and a foot or two thick.“… Continue reading
Around the Ness: The Ring of Bookan
“The Ring of Bookan, in the same neighbourhood [as the Ring of Brodgar], appears to be a similar platform, but it is enclosed with an earthen vallum, and exhibits abundant traces of ruined works on its irregular area.”… Continue reading
Around the Ness: Howastedgarth
By Sigurd Towrie
We finished last week with George Marwick’s claimed “old name” for the Ring of Brodgar – Howastedgarth.
I first stumbled across it in 2012, in a transcription of a talk given by Marwick in Quoyloo, in Orkney’s West Mainland.… Continue reading
