Monument record MHG47284 - Badcaul

NMRS Report: (25/06/2004)
NH43SE 60 4564 3045 and 4557 3040

The site of this township is now occupied by a modern house (Creag Mhor) and its garden, and only one gable-ended building and a limekiln survive. The building stands to the NE of the modern house, just outside the garden at NH 4564 3045 (URQ97 103). It measures 11.2m from NE to SW by 3.9m transversely within walls of mortared dressed rubble standing up to 1.9m high. There is an entrance with a porch in the SE side, flanked on either side by a window, and there is third window in the NW side. No internal partitions survive, though there is a fireplace and a press in each end. The footings of an outshot, 6.1m in overall length, butt against the NE gable. The limekiln lies in a pasture field 80m to the SW at NH 4557 3040 (URQ97 104). It is set into a W-facing slope and the rubble-faced bowl measures 2.5m in internal diameter and 1.2m in depth, although it is choked with rubble to within 0.4m of the top.
The township of Baddicaul is depicted on George Brown's 1808 'Plan of the Davoch of Inchbreen' (National Archives of Scotland, RHP 11955), which shows a cluster of four buildings and a small enclosure at this site, and a fifth building and three enclosures a short distance to the S. The 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Inverness-shire 1875, sheet xxix), which names the settlement Badcaul, depicts four roofed buildings, one unroofed building and an enclosure. Two of the roofed buildings and the unroofed one appear to occupy the same positions as three of those shown in 1808, and one of these two roofed buildings is probably that described above, shown with its outshot on the 1st edition of the 25-inch map (Inverness-shire 1875, sheet xxix.5). The 6-inch map shows the limekiln, without annotation, but the 25-inch edition has more detail, annotating it 'Old Limekiln'.
The Name Book (ONB 1871) describes Badcaul as 'two small farm houses each one storey high thatched and in pretty good repair', though this description may also include one of two settlements depicted to the SE on the 6-inch map, one on the site now occupied by the present house of Badcaul (NH 4577 3025), the other now in woodland (NH 4575 3035, see NH43SE 80).
(URQ97 103-4)
Visited by RCAHMS (SDB) 9 October 1997
ONB 1871