Monument record MHG4296 - Crannog - Eilean Tigh Na Slige

Eilean Tigh na Slige or Eilean Ruighe na Slige (various traditional names are quoted) is an artificial island or crannog in Eaderloch or Ider Loch, an extension of Loch Trieg. In 1933, during operations connected with the Lochaber Water Power Scheme, the loch was temporarily drained, exposing the island and allowing a complete excavation to be made. A great oval of rounded stones and boulders was revealed resting upon layers of sandy silt which covered a great mound of vegetable debris naturally deposited in the bottom of the lake. Very little timber was visible externally but this was not unusual and the excavation revealed a construction of typical Scoto-Irish type in which stout timbers, dressed or undressed, form the skeleton and are held in place partly by upright posts but mainly by masses of stone and earth with intervening layers of brushwood and branches. A date probably within, or perhaps, a little after, the R.B. period is indicated. Very little evidence regarding the dwelling was found, so complete has been the destruction of the superstructure, but such evidence as there was pointed to the probability of a single, wooden, oblong dwelling, with a centrally supported tent-like roof. Three superimposed hearths were found on the site as well as a group of three on the surface at the N. end of the island. No trace of gangway to the island was found and access must therefore have been by boat alone. Finds which were few, included fragments of a sword of probable 16th or 17th century date, portions of leather shoes, a fragment of wool fabric, bronze tweezers, 16th - 17th century earthenware, hand-forged nails and a fragment of a knife, also a silver coin of Mary Queen of Scots (c. 1542-58), and an 18th century brooch. These contemporary references of c.1600 and later references to its alleged use by the outlawed Ronald Og, chief of Keppoch, in its traditional names of Council or Treaty Island point to a permanent occupation ceasing in the latter half of the 16th century and a regular occupation ceasing in the early 17th century. <1>

In the West Highland Museum [Fort William] are several logs recovered from a crannog in Loch Treig, and the keel of a boat formed of a single piece of wood found in the loch c. 1937.
Visited by OS (N K B), 11 May 1970.

A topographic survey of the now-submerged crannog was carried out by AOC Archaeology in 2007. The work was undertaken at the same time as the sampling of structural timbers from the site during a period of low water. Dendrochronological analysis of the oak and pine timbers was inconclusive, but the radiocarbon dates for its construction and use was found to correlate with its use in the C16 as recorded in documentary sources. <2>

For probable logboat and bog-butter trough found near the crannog, see NN37NW 2 and 3 respectively.

(NN 3473 7683) Eilean Tigh na Slige (NAT)
OS 6" map (1904)