Laigh Newton, East Ayrshire
Since the middle of April this year, staff from Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD) have been excavating a multi-phase site adjacent to Loudoun Hill, East Ayrshire. The area currently has planning consent for an extension of Tarmac Northern's sand and gravel quarry. The work was required as a condition of this consent, attached by East Ayrshire Council on the advice of WoSAS, who identified the area as being of high archaeological potential.
The excavation, lead in the field by David Swan and Charlotte Francoz, is focussed on two areas of the site. Following the removal of topsoil by machine, the team of 9 archaeologists are excavating by hand a large number of pits, postholes, linear features and stone buildings. The upper area, encompassing much of the crown of the hill and shown in the photograph above, produced evidence relating to occupation during the prehistoric period. The area has been heavily ploughed over the centuries, and only the bottoms of pits and postholes have survived. Nevertheless, the archaeologists are confident that three large wooden buildings were built on the summit of this hillside, probably during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. One circular building had a large central post, to hold up the roof. Another was a long house with four or five substantial timber posts running parallel through the centre of the building. The shape of the third building is more uncertain but it is likely to have been rectangular or square. The floors of these buildings have long since disappeared, and no hearths have been found. Artefacts from this area are also rare, but a few sherds of dark pottery, some of then Bronze Age, have been found.
A few hundred metres down the hillside is a more sheltered platform where a completely different picture is being unearthed. This platform is shown in the image below. Instead of a prehistoric settlement, the archaeologists are uncovering the remains of a moated farm- or home-stead dated to the medieval period. A farm buried under soil and hill wash nestled into the lee of the hill with good views across the valley towards Loudoun Hill. The archaeologists have found the remains of the stone foundations to what is probably the farm house, which showed evidence for at least one hearth, and a nearby barn or byre. Pottery found amongst the stones is thought to date to about the fourteenth century. The farmstead may have been fortified by a ditch or ditches cut into the sand and gravels, which encircle the platform to keep them and their animals safe. Dark traces in the sandy subsoil indicate where other buildings may have stood. At the back of the platform are the remains of a corn-drying kiln which produced sherds of pottery similar to that found elsewhere on the site.
People may have lived on this spot for a couple of hundred years before the farmstead was abandoned and new farm buildings were built elsewhere. Even though buildings may have moved around the hillside, medieval farmsteads are rarely found in Ayrshire. A moated medieval farmstead is even rarer in Scotland, and comparative examples would more commonly be found in Ulster or England, something that makes this site particularly important. The excavation also shows that the landscape has been used and farmed in this area for at least a thousand years, and possibly as much as five thousand years, given the prehistoric activities on the top of the hill.
This phase of work at Laigh Newton is scheduled to finish on the 1st of June. Further work will happen later when the digs' soil samples, pottery and other artefacts are analysed to fill in some of the missing pieces of the fascinating picture of life in prehistoric and medieval Ayrshire.