Broch of Borwick

The Broch of Borwick is an Iron Age broch on Mainland, Orkney, Scotland (grid reference HY22411678), and a scheduled monument. It stands 8 kilometres southwest of Dounby, on top of a cliff-top promontory 20 metres above the sea. A small stream runs past the site immediately to the east.

The broch has an external diameter of 17 metres and an internal diameter of 8 metres. Its walls are 3.5 to 5 metres thick and now stand to a maximum height of 2.6 metres. The eastern half and the entrance passage are well preserved, but the western half has been destroyed by erosion.

The entrance passage is still lintelled over and is 5.6 metres long, with door-checks each formed of a slab set on edge 3 metres from the outside. A guard cell opened off the right of the passage. The broch was once cut off from the flat land beyond by an outer wall, and there were outbuildings between the wall and the broch.

W. G. T. Watt excavated the site in 1881 and cleared the interior of debris. Ashes, bones and shells mixed with clay lay under the rubble, and beneath them a layer of small flat stones, then the floor. Finds included several combs, a small whale vertebra cup, a spindle whorl, a stone gaming piece, a whetstone, hammerstones, some stone knives and choppers, an iron rod and some querns.

A broch is an Iron Age hollow-walled drystone tower found in Scotland, which holds more than 500 of them, with the densest groups in Caithness, Sutherland and the Northern Isles. The Atlas files them under cyclopean masonry because of their heavy drystone walls, though they are unrelated to the Mycenaean walls that give that term its name.

The Broch of Borwick is located 8 kilometres southwest of Dounby on Mainland, Orkney. The broch stands on top of a cliff-top promontory 20 metres above the sea. A small stream runs past the site immediately to the east.