Monument record MHG5938 - Lon Na Stapaig

NG35SW 38 332 539.

The remains of this township are dispersed over a distance of about 400m across the hillocks and terraces to the W of the lochan filling the bottom of the shallow glen that cuts across the Greshornish peninsula to the WSW of the Greshornish House Hotel. Most of the eleven buildings, which are dispersed to five separate locations, are depicted as un- roofed on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map of 1880, but the principal cluster of five buildings does not appear on either the first or the second editions of the map (Island of Skye &c., Inverness-shire, 1880, 1904, sheet xvi).
Three of this group of buildings (NG 3322 5394) are substantial structures, the largest measuring 12.5m by 3.9m within a wall up to 1m in height, while the other two are considerably smaller; low blocks of masonry in two of the buildings may be the remains of kilns. Although four of these buildings are touching each other, there is no clear evidence of a sequence of construction; there are, however, possible traces of what may be an earlier building on the NW side of the yard that they enclose. Of the other buildings of the township, the two at NG 3316 5406 are of interest on account of the evidence of sequential construction that can be detected. The more northerly of the two, which displays two periods of construction, has been butted on to the other and there is a blocked doorway between them. Adjacent to the more northerly building there is also a block of masonry with a hole some 0.5m in diameter in its top; superficially it resembles a kiln, but there is no trace of a bowl beneath the hole.
The surrounding landscape is bleak and inhospitable and there is relatively little lazy-bedding in the vicinity of the township, most of it being concentrated around the cluster of five buildings at the core and on the southern slopes of the hillock to the E.
(WAT90 1395-1407)
Visited by RCAHMS (SH) 19 November 1990.