Broch ~ Dun nan Gall
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Isle of Mull at Ballygown
Broch ~ Dun nan Gall
“The skills employed in building … brochs is considerable: to construct a building” of some height “without the use of mortar, demands a good deal of practical engineering experience. The Iron age solution to erecting a high defensive wall was to construct it as an H-frame: the wall being built as two concentric rings, tied across all the way up with stone beams or lintels – the whole in effect, being a thick-built and strongly jointed scaffolding. Unlike scaffolding, however, the outer wall was given a slight batter or slope inwards and the platform went up inside it in a spiral.”
” … at Dun nan Gall, the gallery, at least at ground floor level would have been wide enough to walk around and there is the remains of a staircase going up within the wall.”
Dun nan Gall is built on a rocky promontory jutting out into Loch Tuath and is clearly visible from the road from Kilninian to Ulva Ferry just as the houses at Ballygown are reached.”
“… it had a scarcement or timber floor and the stones that supported the floor may be seen jutting out from the inside wall of the broch. “
“… the entrance could be barred across and there is a deep channel, square in section, on one side of the door where the bar was lodged and a shallower hole on the other side into which the bar fitted.”
Jean Whittaker, Mull Monuments and History, 2004, Brown and Whittaker, Tobermory PA75 6P
pp12 – 13