Monument record MHG34645 - Canna, Garrisdale

Created automatically by NMRS Register Utility
User: Admin, Date: Wed 13 Oct 2004
----
NG20NW 129.02 2123 0501 to 2179 0557

The three roofed buildings that formed the farm of 'Garresdale' (Garrisdale: NG20NW 44) in 1805 lie to either side of a burn. The ground surrounding the buildings is shown as cultivated, and, by and large, this coincides with the pattern of enclosure and lazy-beds that can still be traced today. The surviving plots of lazy-beds lie within fields defined by stony banks, and in each case, they are located in areas of better-drained ground, falling either at the edge of burns or to the rear of terraces.
The oval field at the rear of the uppermost terrace within the farm boundary is of considerable interest. Apparently taken into the line of the boundary, it probably represents an earlier enclosure, perhaps indicating that the later fields here developed from isolated enclosures on the moor. The field-bank encloses not only traces of lazy-beds and several small field clearance cairns, one of which yielded sherds of pottery, but also one subrectangular hut, two possible subrectangular structures and eleven mounds, most of which are the remains of collapsed huts (for which, see NG20NW 37). Of these, all but three of the mounds and one possible structure are strung along the line of the bank, and several evidently predate it. Both the enclosure and the farm boundary are depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Argyllshire, 1881, sheet lix).
On a slope below the next crag to the N of this field there is another well-defined plot of lazy-beds. The lazy-beds appear to peter out at the foot of the slope as the ground levels off and becomes more boggy. At this break in slope, two heavily-robbed subrectangular buildings (see NG20NW 39) lie in the midst of the lazy-beds. The relationship between the two is not clear, and although the lazy-beds appear to stop short of the buildings, they do extend across all the ground to either side. Outwith the visibly cultivated area, traces of several banks and orthostatic walls can be followed across the terraces. Although their date is unknown, in at least one case a wall predates a mounded hut, and some undoubtedly belong to a very early, possibly prehistoric, phase of use (for which, see NG20SW 05).
Information from RCAHMS (ARG), 24 November 1997