Summer on Skye

This is one of the Iron Age Brochs we surveyed. They are strategically situated, usually with a good view of the surrounding area. When it was first built it would have stood approximately 30 feet high.The stones were cut and fitted. This is a dry stone construction, double walled with horizontal stones set between the walls resembling a staircase. This structure has several names, a Complex Atlantic Roundhouse, a broch, or dun. Their exact purpose has been debated and opinions vary as to why and how they were built. It is, however, pretty much agreed upon that they were built by those higher in the social structure, because of the emmense effort and extravagant use of resources, both human and material, needed to construct one. This broch is on Waternish Penninsula, Isle of Skye, Scotland. It is called Dun Borrafiach.