of their use, it is of greater importance for the purposes of our
inquiry that we should be able to determine their typical relations and
ascertain the area to which they are confined. It is clear that they
possess a typical form which has no distinctly definable relations with
any other class of stone implements. The type is so peculiar and so
strongly marked, that if it exists anywhere out of Scotland we should
probably have known of its existence. But, with a single exception, said
to have been found in Ireland, there is no record that I can discover of
the occurrence of any specimen beyond the bounds of Scotland. Within
that area it is widely diffused. There are so many specimens in private
hands of whose localities we possess no record, that it is impossible to
ascertain with any degree of precision the relative frequency of their
occurrence in different districts of the country. But their known range
comprehends an area which is but little short of the whole area of
Scotland. They are most abundant in the north-eastern districts, but
they occur as far north as Caithness and Orkney, as far south as
Dumfries, and as far west as Argyle. Whether they belong wholly to the
Pagan time or partly to the Christian period, it is clear that the
prevailing features of their decoration, though distinctly Celtic in
character, are not those of the fully developed style of Celtic ornament
which prevailed throughout the early Christian time. Nor does it possess
the most striking characteristics of the decoration of these objects in
metal, of which so many characteristic examples have now been given. But
the zoomorphic ending of the spiral pattern on the bronze ball from
Lanarkshire, and the double and escaping spirals of the Towie, Elgin,
and Glasterlaw specimens, are sufficiently distinctive to claim for them
a place in the same system of design which produced the peculiar
patterns of the Pagan period, and developed from them the more elaborate
systems of decoration so widely applied in the early Christian art of
Scotland.
* * * * *
In the whole group of objects described in this Lecture we have a series
of examples of the art which characterised the Iron Age Paganism of
Scotland—the period that lies beyond the Christian time and reaches back
until it merges into the Bronze Age culture. The outcome of the whole
examination thus appears to be that the early Christian art of Scotland,
although it had close relations with that of Ireland, was nevertheless
based upon a pre-existing system of Pagan art peculiar to the area of
the British Isles. Although remotely connected with certain developments
of art that appear obscurely among the Iron Age relics of Central and
Southern Europe, this special system of design received its highest
development and attained its full maturity in the British Isles alone.
There it became a distinctive school of decoration, exhibiting different
aspects in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and attaining in each of
these areas a separate development marked by a distinct individuality of
character. Its manifestations in Scotland are those of a peculiar and
highly characteristic style, confining itself to curvilinear forms,
combining its simple elements in a manner that is neither rigidly
geometric nor fettered by conditions of absolute symmetry, but producing
by the variation and rhythmic recurrence of its peculiar features a
series of designs characterised by beauty of form, balance of parts, and
harmonious combination. It differs from the art of the Christian time,
inasmuch as it presents no intermixture of forms and features that are
common to Greek, Roman, or Etruscan art—no interlaced work, no meanders
or key-patterns, or fretwork, and no similitude of foliage, or
foliageous scrolls. It is zoomorphic, but its zoomorphism is chiefly
apparent in the forms of the objects, and seldom exhibited in the
designs with which they are decorated. It is more partial to the
modelling of solid forms of ornament than to the elaborate enrichment of
surface by intricate engraved work, and these solid forms of its surface
ornament rarely become zoomorphic. When engraved or chased ornamentation
is employed, it is used chiefly to produce broad effects by the contrast
between plain spaces in the design and spaces filled with punctulations
or chequers of short parallel lines. We find this peculiar style of art
employed chiefly in the decoration of metal-work in bronze and gold. The
objects so decorated are personal ornaments, arms, harness, and
horse-trappings. The technical skill displayed in the fabrication and
finish of these objects is great, and the quality of the art displayed
in their decoration is high. There is implied in their production a
special dexterity in preparing moulds and compounding alloys, in
casting, chasing, and engraving, in the polishing and setting of jewels,
in the composition and fixing of enamels. But there is further implied
an artistic spirit controlling and combining the results of these
various processes, giving elegance and beauty of a peculiar cast to the
forms of the objects, and increasing the intrinsic elegance and beauty
of the form by the harmonious blending of its special varieties of
surface decoration, in which forms that are solidly modelled are
intermingled with chased or engraved patterns and spaces filled with
colour. A style of art characterised by such originality of design and
excellence of execution must count for something in the history of a
nation’s progress, must have its place to fill in the history of art
itself, when once we have begun to realise the fact that art was not the
exclusive privilege of classic antiquity.
LECTURE IV.
(28TH OCTOBER 1881.)
THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE BROCHS.
In this Lecture I have to deal with the products of a school of
architecture, Celtic in its character, and absolutely peculiar to the
Scottish area.
On the small uninhabited island of Mousa, lying off the east coast of
the mainland of Shetland, there stands a solitary stone structure,
massive in size, peculiar in appearance, and still more peculiar in
character. It is a tower of circular form, wide and lofty, but
constructed of undressed stones laid upon each other without mortar or
other binding material, so that the mass of its uncemented wall coheres
simply by its own vertical pressure.
Its situation is peculiar. The island is small, not over a mile in
length, and less than half a mile in width, bare, flat, and rocky. The
tower is placed on a small promontory on the west side of the island at
the point nearest to the mainland. It stands about 20 feet back from the
edge of the rocks, which slope irregularly to the tide-mark about 20
feet below. There are slight remains of an intrenchment on the sides
which look landward, those facing the rocks and the sea are protected by
the natural features of the ground.
[Illustration: Fig. 160.—Exterior View of the Broch of Mousa, Shetland.]
The material of which the tower is built is the fissile flag of the
island. The stones are flat, sometimes as much as 2 feet in thickness,
but mostly much less, and they rather diminish in size towards the top
of the tower. The stones bear no mark of a tool, and the masonry is not
coursed, but compactly fitted together. The wall goes up with a curve
like that of a lighthouse, and its external appearance (Fig. 160) is
suggestive of great solidity and strength. This suggestion of solidity,
which is due to the bulk of the building rather than to the character of
its masonry, is further intensified by the absence of external openings,
the whole exterior surface being unbroken by a single aperture except
the doorway. It is on the level of the ground on the S.W. side, and is
about 5 feet 3 inches high by 2 feet 11 inches wide, passing straight
through the thickness of the wall, but widening considerably at a
distance of about 7 feet from the outside and rising in the roof.
Entering by this tunnel-like passage through a wall 15 feet 6 inches
thick, the visitor finds himself in the interior of a circular well-like
court, open to the sky above, but completely surrounded by a wall of
that thickness and 45 feet in height. From the inner circumference of
this court (as seen in the ground plan, Fig. 161) there open at various
places other doorways leading into oval chambers constructed in the
thickness of the wall nearly on the ground level. These chambers are
three in number. One placed to right of the entrance is 16 feet in
length, 5 feet 9 inches wide, and 9 feet 9 inches high. Its doorway is
small, 3 feet high and 2 feet wide, passing through 4 feet of the
thickness of the wall. A second chamber opposite the main entrance is 14
feet long, 6 feet 10 inches wide, and 10 feet 6 inches high. Its doorway
is also small, 3 feet 4 inches high and 2 feet 9 inches wide, passing
through a thickness of 4½ feet of walling. The third chamber, situated
to the left of the main entrance, is 14 feet long, 5 feet 6 inches wide,
and 9 feet 6 inches high. Its doorway is 3 feet 2 inches high and 2 feet
3 inches wide, passing through 4 feet of walling. All these chambers are
irregularly oval in form on the ground plan. They are roofed in a
peculiar manner. At variable distances from the floor the walls begin to
be brought inwards by projecting each stone slightly beyond the face of
the stone below it. In this way the distance between the opposite walls
is gradually lessened as they rise in height until they come near enough
to admit of single stones being laid across the space between wall and
wall. This style of converging the walls inwards to obtain support for a
roof of single stones is not new to us. We have met with it in the
beehive houses of the early Christian monasteries and in the inverted
boat-shaped roofs of their churches, built of uncemented stones on a
rectangular ground-plan. It is the style of roof which is common to all
dry-built structures that are roofed, whether they be of Pagan or of
Christian time, because it is the style that is best suited to the
material and the manner of construction. The builders of this edifice
had no stones long enough to span chambers of six feet wide, and if they
had had them long enough they would have been too weak to bear the
superincumbent weight of a wall forty feet in height. Therefore they
made their chamber-roofs semi-vaulted, while the doors and passages,
which were narrow, were simply spanned with strong flat lintels. These
chambers on the ground floor are lighted by window-like openings above
the doorways, which rise one over the other, and serve not only to admit
light and air, but to distribute the weight to be borne by the lintels.
In each of the chambers there are small ambry-like recesses in the
walls, but no fireplace or chimney. They are small, dimly-lighted,
dungeon-like rooms, but neither smaller, worse-lighted, or more
dungeon-like than many rooms in the lime-built castles of the nobles of
the Feudal ages.
[Illustration: Fig. 161.—Ground Plan of the Broch of Mousa, Shetland.
(From Plan by Sir Henry Dryden.)]
Half-way between the chamber facing the main entrance and the one to the
left of it there is a doorway placed at a height of four feet above the
ground level. This doorway, which is higher and wider than those which
lead into the chambers, is slightly larger than the main entrance
itself, being 5 feet 4 inches high and 3 feet wide. It leads to a stair
constructed like the chambers within the thickness of the wall. At the
foot of the stair there is an oval chamber, from one end of which the
stair rises in a steep slope, but following the curve of the wall to the
top. The steps are single flat stones, varying in width from ten inches
to two feet, undressed, and laid above each other so that they give a
tread of about five inches and nearly the same of a rise. The upper part
of the tower which is traversed by the stair is differently constructed
from the lower part. To the height of about eleven feet above the ground
level the wall of the tower is carried up solid except for the vacancy
occasioned at intervals in its thickness by the chambers and their
accesses. But above this height the wall is carried up with a vacancy in
its centre (as seen in the section Fig. 162) so as to form a series of
circular galleries placed one immediately over another, and crossed
successively from the lowest to the highest by the rise of the stair
which gives access to them.
[Illustration: Fig. 162.—Section of the elevation of the Broch of Mousa.
(From Plan by Sir H. Dryden.)]
These galleries, situated in the heart of the wall, are six in number.
Each begins about 3 feet 9 inches in front of the stair, and goes round
the whole tower on the level till it comes against the back of the
stair, which closes it at that end, so that entrance to the gallery or
exit from it can only be obtained by stepping across the space
intervening between the end of the gallery floor and the steps of the
stair. The floors of the galleries are formed of flat undressed slabs,
the end of which reach into the walls on both sides. These slabs are
about 6 inches thick, and those whose under surfaces form the roof of
the first gallery present their upper surfaces as the floor of the
second, and so throughout. None of the galleries exceed 5 feet 6 inches
in height or 3 feet 2 inches in width, and some of the upper spaces are
now much narrower; but as the position of the upper walls has evidently
shifted, the original dimensions of the upper galleries cannot be
ascertained. Four of the galleries that now remain (for the tower is
incomplete at top) are lighted by four vertical ranges of windows all
looking into the interior court. One range of fourteen openings is over
the main entrance. Another of eighteen openings is over the entrance to
the stairs. The third set has seventeen openings, and the fourth is
imperfect, many of the lintels having been broken out. The peculiarities
of these windows are—(1) that they are placed close to each other,
vertically, with merely the thickness of a lintel between each opening;
(2) they are wider than they are high, the greatest width being 2 feet 9
inches, and the greatest height not exceeding a foot; (3) they diminish
in size gradually from the lowest to the highest; and (4) they do not
range so far upwards as to include the two upper galleries, which are
windowless.
Let us now group the main features of this singular building. It is a
circular tower, composed of a dry-built wall 15 feet thick, enclosing a
court 20 feet in diameter. The wall rises to a height of 45 feet, and
has no opening to the outside except the doorway which gives access to
the court. Opening from the court are a series of chambers on the ground
floor constructed in the thickness of the wall and rudely vaulted with
overlapping masonry. Above these are successive ranges of level
galleries, also in the thickness of the wall, each going round the
tower, and placed so that the roof of the one below always forms the
floor of the next above. These galleries are crossed successively by a
stair from which access to them is obtained by facing round in the
ascent and stepping across the vacant space forming the well of the
stair. The three lower galleries only are lighted, and the windows are
placed in vertical ranges so close to each other as to be separated only
by their upper and lower lintels.
Each of these features, taken by itself, is specially remarkable, and
the presence in the one building of such a group of features that are
wholly unfamiliar to us invests it with a character that is distinctly
peculiar. From this examination of its character, it becomes obvious
that although the construction and arrangements of the building are
clearly those of a place of strength, it is incapable of association by
way of relationship with any variety of castle known in historic times.
But a wider survey of the remains of the ancient strongholds of the
people who have occupied the land in times of which we have no distinct
or detailed historic record will show that it has relationships so close
as to amount to an almost actual identity with many similar structures
in different parts of Scotland.
[Illustration: Fig. 163.—View of external aperture of doorway of Broch
in Glenbeg. (From a Drawing by J. Romilly Allen.)]
[Illustration: Figs. 164, 165.—Ground plan and section of elevation of
doorway and passages through the wall of Broch in Glenbeg. (Drawn by J.
Romilly Allen.)]
For instance, in the small valley of Glenbeg, which runs nearly parallel
with Glenelg, in the west of Inverness-shire, there are two such
structures. One is situated on the edge of the meadow which lies in the
bottom of the valley. It is greatly destroyed; more than half the circle
of the wall is gone, and part of the height of the portion that remains
is wanting. The internal diameter of the tower, at the level of the
rubbish which encumbers the floor, is 33½ feet, and the thickness of the
wall 11 feet. The doorway (Fig. 163), which is the only opening to the
outside, is 3 feet 5 inches wide at the head, the lower part concealed
with rubbish. About 4 feet inside the outer plane of the wall there is a
rebate for a door (Fig. 164), with checks in the shape of large slabs
set edgewise in the wall. Within these checks the passage widens to 5
feet, and the roof rises as shown in the section, Fig. 165. On the south
side of the passage there is a guard-chamber opening from it, and
constructed in the thickness of the wall. Three galleries and part of a
fourth remain, but the stair is gone. The galleries are lighted by
vertical ranges of windows looking to the interior. The greatest height
of wall remaining is not over 30 feet, but 7 feet of its height were
taken by the contractor for the Bernera Barracks in 1722. It must
therefore, before that time, have been nearly as high as Mousa now is.
[Illustration: Fig. 166.—Section of the elevation of Broch in Glenbeg,
near Glenelg. (From Plan by Sir H. Dryden.)]
At the distance of less than a mile up the valley on the same side, and
placed on a considerable eminence, is another ruined structure of the
same kind (Fig. 166), but more dilapidated. No part of the height now
exceeds 25 feet. The diameter of the tower internally has been about 30
feet, and the wall is 12 feet thick. Traces of chambers on the ground
floor are visible, but choked with rubbish. The door and stairs are
gone. Three galleries remain in part. The first is 6 feet high and 4
feet wide, the second 6 feet high and 3½ feet wide, the third
inaccessible and somewhat smaller.
These structures, so far as their distinctive features remain
unobliterated, present a striking similarity alike in the manner of
their construction and the nature of their arrangements to those of
Mousa. They vary in certain details, as in size, in thickness of wall,
in the presence of a guard-chamber in connection with the passage, but
in all the essential features of plan, construction, and arrangements
they are substantially the same.
[Illustration: Fig. 167.—Ground plan of doorway of Broch at Loch Duich,
with its guard-chamber. (Wall 12 feet thick.)]
Near the head of Loch Duich, a few miles from Glenelg, is another ruined
tower. It stands on the slope of an eminence close under a high crag.
The lower part of the structure is entire, but little remains of its
height. Its internal diameter is 31 feet, its thickness of wall 12 feet.
The doorway is in the lower side of the building facing the N.E. It is 3
feet wide at the outside, and at 4 feet 3 inches within the outer plane
of the wall (Fig. 167) there is a rebate for a door with checks formed
of long slabs 9 inches thick, set edgewise in the wall. Behind these is
a bar-hole on either side for a long stout bar. The hole, on one side,
is long enough for the bar to lie in it permanently, and on the other
only long enough to receive its end when pulled across behind a door
either constructed of wood or formed of a slab of stone set up against
the checks. On the S.E. side of the entrance passage (Fig. 168) is a
doorway 18 inches wide and 3 feet high, giving [Illustration: Fig.
168.—Sectional elevation of S.E. side of entrance passage of the Broch
at Loch Duich, showing doorway of guard-chamber, and bar-hole (wall 12
feet thick).] access to an oval guard-chamber constructed in the
thickness of the wall, 12 feet long, 6 feet wide, and about 7 feet high,
roofed in the usual manner by overlapping masonry and flat stones laid
across. There are traces of other chambers on the ground floor, and part
of a gallery remains over the entrance, but all above is gone. The
masonry of this tower is more massive than that of those in Glenbeg, but
the general plan and manner of construction are precisely similar in
character. In point of fact there is so little deviation from the
typical plan of construction among all the examples that are known, that
the detailed descriptions of them are for the most part repetitions of
features that are closely similar. But as we are dealing with buildings
that are in ruins, and, as it appears, with a class of buildings of
which no complete example is now known to exist, it is important to
determine if possible whether there may be sufficient ground for
assigning to the class the general feature of height, of which, in the
majority of cases, no direct evidence now remains.
[Illustration: Fig. 169.—Broch known as Cole’s Castle, Sutherlandshire.
(From a Sketch by Dr. Arthur Mitchell.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 170.—Dun Dornadilla, in Strathmore, Sutherlandshire.
(From a Sketch by Dr. Arthur Mitchell.)]
There is distinct evidence on record that a number of these massively
built towers were of considerable height. George Low, in 1774, says of
the ruined tower or Broch of Burraness, in the island of Yell, in
Shetland, that it had an inside diameter of 31 feet, a thickness of wall
of 10 feet, and a total height of 20 feet. Of the Cullswick Broch he
says that its internal diameter was 26 feet 6 inches, its thickness of
wall 18 feet, and the total height remaining 23 feet. Castle Cole (Fig.
169), at the junction of the Blackwater and the Brora, was then 15 feet
in height, and part of it still remains of about that height. Dun
Dornadilla, in Sutherlandshire (Fig. 170), as described by Mr. Cordiner
in 1776, and Mr. Pope of Reay, in 1777, had an internal diameter of 27
feet, and the total height then remaining was estimated at 25 to 30
feet, with three galleries and part of the stair. Maitland, in 1757,
describes Dun Alisaig, in Ross, as being 30 feet internal diameter, with
12 feet thickness of wall, and three of the galleries remaining, which
implies a height of 25 to 30 feet. Dun Carloway, in Lewis, was 40 feet
high in the end of last century, and showed the plan of its galleries
with their vertical ranges of windows almost as completely as Mousa.
Judging from these examples, which still have, or which in recent times
have had a considerable portion of their height remaining, and taking
into account the quantity of material which envelops the bases of most
of those that have been reduced to the condition of mere mounds of ruin,
it seems established by evidence that there were many cases in which the
total original height could scarcely have been less than that of Mousa,
and that height, as well as bulk, was one of the main features of the
typical structure.
These examples will suffice to convey a clear idea of the distinctive
features of the type of structure with which we are dealing. Its main
features of distinction, by which it separates itself from all known
types, are (1) that it is a circular tower of dry-built masonry, wide
and lofty, and enclosing within it a central area open to the sky; (2)
that all its apertures, except the external opening of the entrance to
the central area, look into this enclosed interior court; and (3) that
its chambers, stair, and galleries are contained within the thickness of
this enclosing wall.
Having thus obtained a distinct conception of the type, we now proceed
to determine its range or area. For this purpose it is necessary to
ascertain what structures exist in Scotland, or out of it, possessing
these typical features.
[Illustration: Fig. 171.—General plan of Broch and its fortifications on
Cockburn Law, Berwickshire.]