Monument record MHG28503 - Creagannacaorach

NC60NE 52 6798 0814

The remains of this farmstead stand on the edge of a terrace about 550m WSW of Creagannacaorach, overlooking the burn which flows S and then E from Loch Preas nan Sgiathanach to the Torbreck Burn. It comprises two buildings and a corn-drying kiln, all overgrown with rough grass and heather, and there is a third building on the W side of the burn about 70m to the WNW.
The largest building (ROG95 601) measures 18.5m in length by 2.8m in breadth within a rubble wall 0.7m thick and up to 0.3m high. The interior is divided into two compartments, and an entrance leads into the WNW compartment, just above the head of a drain which runs down the length of the compartment to the WNW end. At the ESE end of the building there is an outshot on the SSW side which measures internally 4.4m by 3.3m. A small enclosure, defined by a stony bank, is attached to the ESE end of the building.
The second building stands to the SE of the first (ROG95 602). It appears to have measured 8.6m by 3.1m internally, although its SSW end is fragmentary. This building also has an enclosure on its E side. The kiln (ROG95 603) is set into the slope 13m S of the first building. It has a bowl measuring 2m in diameter within a stony bank 1m thick and it opens towards the SSW. There is no evidence of an attached barn.
The final building (ROG95 600) stands above the W bank of the burn at NC 6790 0816. It measures 7.8m from NNE to SSW by 2.7m transversely within walls reduced to rows of large grounders and collapsed heaps of turf. There may have been an entrance on the ESE side.
The ground around the farmstead is almost all heather covered and boggy, and no traces of cultivation were observed. None of the buildings are depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Sutherland 1879, sheets xcv-xcvi), nor are they depicted on a plan of Langwell, possibly by David Aitken and drawn up ca.1770 (National Library of Scotland 10225/136-8), although the surveyor appears to have recognised some agricultural potential in the ground to the NW, on the E side of the burn, identifying an area of four acres of 'improvable ground'.
(ROG95 600-3)
Visited by RCAHMS (SDB) 6 March 1995