Monument record MHG9871 - Birchwood Lodge

NC91NE 60 981 191.

Centred on NC 981 191 is a settlement of three stone-walled hut circles (A-C) in association with a minor field system. The situation is hill moorland open to the SE. The contemporary agriculture is noted by some stone clearance heaps, odd lynchets and occasional rickles of stone clearance; on a natural terrace just W of the huts is an obvious cultivation plot, about 50.0m by 20.0m. On the slopes over to the E and NE are sporadic mounds of stone clearance. Huts B and C are much reduced and peat-overgrown and are similar in build.
Hut A is markedly well-preserved, and measures 8.0m diameter internally with a clubbed entrance, 1.0m wide, from the ESE. The wall in the SE half comprises an inner facing of contiguous boulder slabs on edge up to 0.7m high, backed by rubble infill. It is 1.0m to 1.2m broad, but widens to 2.4m at the entrance. In contrast the other half of the hut is severely reduced.
Huts B and C measure in internal diameter 5.0m and 7.0m respectively, the walls surviving as scant spreads of rubble stones with some outer facing stones showing. A slab,set radially in the ESE arc of the wall,remains on the N side of the entrance to hut B; the position of the entrance to hut C is uncertain.
Surveyed at 1:10,560.
Visited by OS (J M) 18 May 1976.