Some photos from my dogwalk today at Leradale.
The Original croft house – now derelict.
The last of the flowers – all beginning to die down now. There is a real autumnal feel in the air.
One of the enclosures in the field (and small dog).
Some field terracing (possibly Bronze Age).
Old field boundaries or enclosures.
More enclosures – the inner line of rocks, not the complete line.
And again, the inner line of rocks on the left but not the “wall” – that’s modern!
The Bronze Age oval house.
(model from the Shetland Museum)
A modern-built house probably used for lambing.
Nothing changes here except for the fact I need to really read up on Bronze Age life in Shetland because, as I wander around with the dogs, I feel stupidly ignorant of the folks’ way of living.
Where the wiggly lines are, show the Bronze Age settlement.
The Historic Environment Scotlanc blurb…..
“The monument comprises the remains of a prehistoric settlement of at least one house together with the remains of contemporary fields.
The settlement is located on a NE-facing slope overlooking Loch of Breck. A single oval house has been revealed by peat-cutting. It measures some 6m by 4.5m internally, with walls up to 2m thick. The entrance has been from the SE, where a curving wall foundation suggests a porch or windbreak. Within the house, alcoves can be traced in the inner face of the wall on the NE side. To the N and NW of the house small squarish terraces probably represent contemporary fields, and there are a number of small cairns, perhaps of field cleared stones, in the area.
The area to be scheduled is irregular on plan, bounded on the NE by a modern fence, which is itself excluded. It measures a maximum of 95m NE-SW by 90m, to include the house, fields and cairns and an area around them in which traces of activities associated with their construction and use may survive, as marked in red on the accompanying map.
The monument is of national importance as a small prehistoric farming settlement which has the potential, through excavation and analysis, to provide important information about prehistoric domestic architecture and subsistence economy.”
But yet no one is interested or wants to come and have a look. We love it, though.