This small loch, which is within a few minutes' walk of Ravenstone
Castle, is surrounded by a broad fringe of marsh and tall reeds.
Within this marshy area, and just skirting the water's edge on its
western side, there is a flat mound, some 80 feet square and 6 or 7
feet high, having on its surface the ruins of dry stone buildings.
These ruins consist of the foundations of walls, a foot or so high,
which clearly define the outline of a superstructure divided into
five rectangular compartments. This building did not occupy the whole
surface of the island, measuring only 55 feet by 47. The mound was
composed of large flags and boulders, on the top of which a few trees
found a suitable habitat, and no less than four of the compartments
were occupied each by the trunk of a venerable looking ash. Upon
investigating the base of the mound, piles and the projecting ends
of transverse beams were discovered in several places, and the
conjectured opinion that the entire mound was built over a substratum
of woodwork was conclusively proved by digging a central pit through
the only vacant compartment in the stone building. The result of this
was to reveal, at a depth of eight feet, a network of beams lying
transversely to each other, but to an undetermined depth.
The north or land side of the island showed signs of having been
roughly built up with large undressed flags, but the rest of its stony
perimeter was quite dilapidated. That the wooden island was inhabited
as a crannog, before its level was raised to its present height by the
addition of the enormous mass of stones and earth underlying its final
buildings, an idea suggested by the discovery of charcoal and the
shells of hazel-nuts over the woodwork, is a hypothesis that requires
further proofs before it can be accepted as well founded in fact. (B.
426, p. 121.)