Ancient Houses of North Rona

Abstract

IN a short notice of a book on Ronay¹, the reviewer refers to the curious remains of dwelling houses on North Rona and likens them (from the description) to the dolmen of Locmariaquer and Carnac. In the latter part of October 1928, in the course of making a census of the grey seals of Scotland during the breeding season, on behalf of the Scottish Office, W. L. Calderwood and I landed on this island, seldom visited by naturalists or archæologists. The salient characteristics of the houses, which seem to have been inhabited in recent historic times, are that they are half-sunk in the ground, have a low wall of dry-stone construction rising above the surface, which probably carried a wooden roof made water-tight by turves, and were entered not directly, but through a low and generally curved, roofed passage, along which the entrant had to crawl.