EHG5228 - Watching brief - Mill Road, Kingussie

A desk based assessment and watching brief were carried out at Mill Road, Kingussie, adjacent to St Columba’s cemetery in 2018 by West Coast Archaeological Services. The watching brief was commissioned by Scottish Water. The particular section falling under the brief was in Mill Road, adjacent to St Columba’s Cemetery, running from a point southwest of the entrance into the cemetery (NH 75707 00729) to a point just beyond the end of the public road opposite Mill Cottage and to the southwest of the northwest wall of the cemetery (NH 75676 00773). A trench carrying a spur of the network from the pipeline terminus to the nearby house called Kirklea was also monitored during the watching brief. The monitoring recovered evidence for metalworking, the remains of two substantial walls from a Carmelite Friary, and disarticulated human remains that had been interred within the Friary. The excavations also recovered a small number of artefacts dating from the Medieval to Post-Medieval periods. Although the desk-based assessment for the works including a review of the available historic mapping placed the Carmelite Friary and the remains of a possible earlier church with a St Columba foundation within the existing cemetery, the exact location of these buildings had been lost. Subsequently, during 2019, a program of post-excavation analysis was carried out on samples and materials recovered during the watching brief, which included submitting samples for radiocarbon dating. The results of the post-excavation analysis are included in the revised Data Structure Report, which supersedes the original report <1>