Monument record MHG5931 - Buaile Nam Biorrach

NG35SW 32 336 533.

This township is centred on the hillock known as Cnoc Chearcaill and comprises at least eighteen buildings dispersed over a distance of about 600m. Several large fields enclosed by turf banks are visible at the N end of the township, but unenclosed lazy-beds were detectable in the bracken that clothed the E slopes of Cnoc Chearcaill at the date of survey and on the grass moorland to the S. The hut-circle lies at the N end of the township.
The township is of interest for the variety of different forms of building that are present, none of which are depicted on earlier editions of the Ordnance Survey maps. The principal cluster of buildings lies on two terraces on the S side of the summit of Cnoc Chearcaill (NG 3360 5333). Several periods of construction are identifiable here, the most recent of which is represented by substantial stone-walled buildings measuring internally between 14m and 10.3m in length and 3.8m and 4.3m in breadth; the earlier buildings have been heavily robbed. Another substantial building of this sort lies on the perimeter of a large field on the E flank of the hillock (NG 3370 5341).
Of rather different character are four buildings whose interiors have been sunk back into the slope and their walls reduced to little more than low stony banks along the downslope sides; three of these lie at the S end of the township (NG 335 531) and the fourth lies at the N end (NG 3368 5359). Internally these range from 9.8m to 12.5m in length and from 3m to 3.6m in breadth.
On the E flank of Cnoc Chearcaill (NG 3365 5338) there are also what are probably two building platforms with no trace of any walling at all.
One lies along the slope (8.5m by 3.5m) and the other across the slope (9.5m by 3.5m and up to 1.2m deep); they form the end and part of one side of an enclosure.
The last building of note lies amongst the lazy-beds at the S extremity of the township (NG 3347 5302). It measures 9.1m by 2.9m internally and its wall is little more than a row of boulders which appears to be partly buried in peat along the S side.
(WAT90 1353-74, 1376-8)

32.01 NG 3372 5357 Hut-Circle (1375)

Visited by RCAHMS (SH) 26 June 1990.