Monument record MHG10291 - Site of Broch, Cnoc Chaisteal, Helmsdale

Knockcastle - a circular feature is named and marked on Kirk's 1771 plan of "the King's Highway to Caithness" NLS MSS Dep 313/3582
The site is not named, but possibly is the circular feature that is marked lying immed outside the eastern area of the new planned town on 1820 estate plan of East Helmsdale NLS MSS Acc 10225/345 - HAW 7/2004

ND01NW 24 0310 1525.
Stone Cup, Lamp, Querns etc found (NAT) OS 25" map, (1971)

A villa named Cnoc Chaisteal is built on the site of a broch. In digging the foundations there were recovered a steatite cup, a stone lamp, a saddle quern, portions of one or more rotary querns and a stone whorl. All of these objects were preserved at the house. A quantity of shells of edible molluscs, exposed in a small piece of garden adjoining, probably indicated the site of a kitchen midden.
RCAHMS 1911, visited 1909. <1>

There is no trace of a broch at Cnoc Chaisteal, built about 1880, and the present whereabouts of the finds is unknown.
Visited by OS (N K B) 2 December 1976.