Qualla: Càrn Liath Broch

Càrn Liath Broch: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Henderson, CC BY-SA 2.0. A whale bone club. That is one of the objects Iron Age people left behind at Càrn Liath, the broch that has stood beside the modern A9 road for roughly two thousand years. The dig also turned up pottery, flint, stone hammers, mortars, pestles, querns for grinding grain, shale rings, long-handled bone combs, a silver fibula brooch, steatite cups carved from soapstone imported from Shetland, and an iron blade. People lived here. They cooked, ground corn, fastened cloaks with imported brooches, drank from soapstone cups, and used a whale-bone club for some purpose lost to us now. Four kilometres northeast of Golspie, with the North Sea behind it and the Sutherland hills rising west, Càrn Liath is a quiet astonishment.

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Image: Bill Henderson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Càrn Liath Broch: Tower of the Picts

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wojsyl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Brochs are unique to Iron Age Scotland - drystone towers, built without mortar, with double walls separated by hollow galleries and intramural stairs that climbed inside the wall thickness. The best-preserved examples, on Mousa in Shetland or at Dun Carloway on Lewis, still stand...

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Image: Wojsyl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Càrn Liath Broch: Before the Broch

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit sylvia duckworth, CC BY-SA 2.0. The 1986 excavation revealed something unexpected. Càrn Liath was not the first settlement on this spot. The site had been occupied in the Bronze Age, centuries before the broch was built. A cist burial - a stone-lined grave - was found beneath the later structures, containing a ...

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Image: sylvia duckworth | CC BY-SA 2.0

Càrn Liath Broch: The Village Around the Tower

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Wood, CC BY-SA 2.0. The broch did not stand alone. The 1986 dig uncovered the foundations of many outbuildings in the enclosure surrounding it - some clearly built later, in the centuries after the broch fell out of use, but some possibly contemporary with the tower itself. The picture that emerges ...

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Image: Andrew Wood | CC BY-SA 2.0

Càrn Liath Broch: Disappearing Walls

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubobubo2, CC BY-SA 3.0. Càrn Liath has been slowly worn down over the centuries. In 1909, the entrance passage was still clearly visible on the east side of the broch. By 1960, no structural features were discernible above ground - the tower's lower courses had been buried under collapse and turf. The 1...

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Image: Bubobubo2 | CC BY-SA 3.0