EHG4025 - Evaluation - New house and shed at Croft 1, West Suisnish

An archaeological evaluation was carried out in 2007 by Martin Wildgoose as part of a condition on a planning application to erect a new house and access road on the site. The evaluation consisted of a desk-based assessment, two site visits, and an evaluation of the visible remains by trial excavation. The first site visit - conducted after the desk-based assesment - revealed that initial ground works had already been completed, and these had substantially damaged the in-situ archaeological remains. Structures 26 and 27 were totally destroyed, and structures 24 and 25 (numbers allocated following an earlier survey of the area - see EHG1334) had been cut through to form the access road. This was reported to the Planning Officer, and a new brief was issued, stating that the archaeologist had to carry out an assessment of the damage, and to trial trench the existing structures. The second visit to the site entailed the creation of a site plan, the recording of Building 1, and the excavation of a single trial trench through structure 25. Structures 26 and 27 were all but demolished, and no archaeological work was conducted on either structure. A section was recorded where the access road had cut through structures 24 and 25, which showed that the dyke forming the enclosure known as structure 24 was constructed of turf and soil, and was predated by structure 25. Both structures 24 and 25 were determined to be enclosures. The desk-based assessment suggested that these structures were abandoned durnig the general abandonment of the Suisinish Township by 1851, and that Building 1 must have been built between 1851 and 1975. The only find discovered on the site was a single sherd of Scottish sponge ware, dating from the first half of the C19. <1>