Yarrows Heritage

Hut circles are the visible remains of prehistoric roundhouses. They are ubiquitous in the Scottish landscape, representing the dwellings of people who lived here in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Roundhouses were used as the principal domestic dwelling for over 2000 years, only being superceded by slightly different shaped buildings in the Pictish period. 

 

The primary component of a roundhouse was the tall thatched roof, lying on timbers supported by a ring of posts in the middle of the building. Many excavation sites record the post-holes left in the ground after the post had rotted away over time. The roof stretched down and over a simple wall that could have been made of stone, turf, or sometimes wattle. The walls of a roundhouse therefore did not support the weight of the roof but were there to exclude the weather and contain the animals that would have been housed inside. Typically the entrance would have been in the east or south-east part of the building, away from the prevailing wet south-west winds. There would have been a central hearth, surrounded by the roof posts, with the animals, sleep areas and work areas outside the post ring. Sometimes a circular ditch ring can still be seen outside the walls, taking the rain from off the roof, and draining water away from the inside of the building.

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The remains of these roundhouses are often seen as circular depressions in the ground - the previous living area - usually surrounded by the low circular mound. The image above shows a single hut circle, covered in heather and enclosed within a post and wire fence. Now protected from grazing animals, the features seen in previous surveys are now obscured by exuberant vegetation. The image from Perth to the right shows a scattering of hut circles in a grazed landscape where they stand out more from the landscape.