Episode: 3896
Title: HPR3896: The Brochs of Glenelg
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3896/hpr3896.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 07:38:26

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3896 from Monday the 10th of July 2023.
Today's show is entitled, The Brocks of Glenilk.
It is hosted by Andrew Conway, and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, a verbal tour in situ of one of the two brocks of Glenilk.
Hello, Hacker Public Radio people, this is Andrew, also known as Magnalu,
and as you can hear, I'm not in my usual spot in my house.
I am out in the wilds of Scotland, and I'm stood in a windy Glen,
as a valley, which people who don't know the Scottish word Glen,
and I'm at a brock, and I thought this is something that may interest Hacker Public Radio people.
So what is a brock? Well, this brock is called Dunn-Telve, and it says here,
on the sign that is right in front of me, that brocks are highly impressive,
prehistoric buildings unique to Scotland, and filmed mainly in the north and west of Scotland,
dating from anywhere around 400 to 200 BC, and they were probably built to reflect the prestige
of their inhabitants, and up to 500 sites have been identified as possible brocks.
Now to look at, think of a cooling tower, or a chimney, it's cylindrical,
but tapering as you go higher. It's quite high, let's see, so I would say,
my son who's over six foot, he's got two meters tall, he's currently stood at the bottom of it,
and if you've got him, if you've got him standing his shoulders, I think it would take maybe,
maybe about eight of him, so yeah, eight times two, that's 16 meters tall, and that's in his
green state. One side of it is actually only about three meters, but the side nearest me is,
yeah, I would say at least 16 meters, and originally I think probably it was 10 meters tall,
so it's made up of the stri-stone, so it's unsamounted stone that's held in place by its weight,
and the tapered circular structure gives great structural integrity,
and it actually has two walls, has an outer wall inner wall, and that creates a living space
in between the walls, where I think inhabitants may have slept, for example, and moved up and down
through the levels, because it would be a multi-level structure, and there would be a central space
where perhaps in winter months you might have brought livestock inside, maybe. The truth is,
we don't really know enough a lot about rocks, and exactly how they were used, or why they were built,
but it's felt that, because they were so difficult to build, and they're really not that efficient
at housing people, you know, little huts, where it would be far easier solution to just housing
many people, but it must have been an early form of prestige dwelling, and potentially it could,
you know, it could defend you, but it's not that big, it's not as big as a castle, so you couldn't,
if somebody laid siege to you, well you wouldn't survive that long, because you would
not store that much inside, I don't think, and you could have access to running water, so
mischievous, don't tell the rocker mat, is actually very close to whatever, but if you're besieged
trapped inside it, you wouldn't have any access to water, unless you happen to store it inside,
which should be quite difficult, back in a few hundred years BC. It's one of actually three
rocks in this glen, there's this one, there's another one called Dunntrodden, and then further up
the glen is another block, I can't remember the name of, it's much more ruined, and hardly anyone
knows about, but the two rocks, the one I'm at Dunntelve, another one Dunntrodden, are the two best
preserved rocks on the mainland, there's more, and some better examples on islands, there's one,
one or two in Lewis, sorry Lewis Sky, and actually I've also seen one out on Orkney, one of the
islands in Orkney, but these by far the best ones on the mainland, and they're quite ruined,
I'll put some pictures on the show notes, and the ruins, the state of them, is almost certainly
because they were plundered for stone, the stone that is built of, would have been quite desirable
if you wanted to build a more conventional dwelling, possibly actually in the last few hundred years,
and indeed there was a story that some barracks that was built in the 18th century, which is
down the road in the village called Glenelg, Glenelg is the name of the village, it's also notable,
because it's a palindrome, it's a spelt, the same backwards as forward, Glenelg. Anyway,
there was some barracks built there by the British Army, and it's quite, I think there's
documentary evidence that stone was taken from the rocks and used to build those barracks,
so I'll pause there and actually go into the broch and talk to you a bit more about the details
that I see within. So I'm now stood just outside the broch, and it's quite impressive when you're
this close to it. At my feet there's a modern stone with the letters VR carved into it, I assume
that stands for Victoria Regina, who as the brochs were first surveyed by archaeologists, or as they
were probably known back then, antiquarians during the reign of Queen Victoria. I'm not sure why they
left these stones VR dotted about the brochs, but they did, perhaps it was, they were used for
surveying it, I don't know, and why they get VR carved into them, I don't know either, but
I think maybe people were more into monarchs back then than they are now. So if I approach the
brochs, it's an entrance way, it juts out from the side of the broch, and the stones are huge,
I mean the stone in front of me is a single stone that's been placed there for the purpose as a
gateway of some kind, and the stone is about a five foot tall, so we'll go across that, one and a
half meters tall, something like that, and that was with a holistic tube, it's certainly narrower
in other dimensions than it's height, and a several of them, it isn't the only one. So the first
thing you would conclude is that they went to great effort, those stones could not have all been
lying around, and they have evidence for looking at them that they have been shaped in some way,
they're not completely natural in shape, most of the rest of the stones are just piled up, as I say,
dry stone, and I'm walking through a doorway, I have to duck down because it's, I'm five foot
ten, so well on the two meters, but I have to duck down, avoid bashing my head on the door,
which is again a massive single piece of stone, and as I enter on my left as a wall, above me
is, well I don't know what it is, but an upstairs gallery, oh and there's a human, there's a human
on the rock that is known to me, but on the right is a passageway where I could, well I don't know
what this would be, some, some, some little store room or a guard room or something, it looks like
it was a room, and it doesn't lead anywhere, and if I come back up with that, I can walk into the
central area of the rock, and on my left is another door, so this is a circular opening, how,
how big is it in diameter? Let me see, I'm trying to imagine how many of my suns lying down,
it would take to cover this diameter, I would say about one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, let's say 14 meters, the internal diameter is 14 meters, and the two walls themselves are
probably at least another three meters, so the internal diameter, 14 meters external would be
17 meters, something like that, and there's one doorway, there's two doorways leading
off the main central courtyard of the rock, and this would have, I believe, would have been covered,
it would have been covered courtyard, there would have been a roof high above me, really quite high
above me, and the doorway I came through is one way at the courtyard, and there's another way that
I've just gone through, again on one side the left is a dead end, which could have formed a room,
a store room, or maybe you could have kept animals in there, I don't know, and then to my right
is the staircase, and this staircase is built between the two, the inner and the outer wall
of the rock, it's quite narrow but not difficult to ascend, you certainly would have to squeeze past
some nails, and if I come up, I come up into the, the first level of the rock, now it's currently
in a ruined state, so the staircase has been destroyed, it doesn't go any further up,
although it is possible to climb to the higher level, so I see one, two, three levels where you
could, in principle, fit, and the higher level looks really small, maybe a child, maybe a small
children could live up there, an adult couldn't fit, so really there's the ground floor, the first floor,
the second floor where adults could fit, and then the floors above that really look too small,
but it does look like there was structures further up, so maybe there was internal floors and the
internal circular space above the courtyard, why I called the courtyard, there might be another
floors, and because the the rock is somewhat ruined, you can see, you can see how it was built,
and it, and it tapers and gets narrower as you go up, and the gap between the walls gets narrower
as well, it's a, it's a very pleasant place, I should describe the setting, I mean a, a glen,
the hills either side of me are, they're, the hills on each side of the glen are at least, I would say,
at least 300 to 500 meters, so we're talking, you know, 1,000, 1,500 feet high, so I'm quite steep as
well, I mean I could walk up it, but you couldn't build a road up it, certainly it's very steep
in both sides, and it would be a very tiring walk, indeed, and the rock itself is surrounded by
a few oak trees, which are quite impressive, and give a character to the place, I remember my first
visit here, which was, oh, 1995, so getting over 30 years ago, and I was raining heavily then,
it's, it's dry just now, I was raining earlier, it's a very pleasant evening, quite a magical place
actually, you can, I can almost see why humans would be drawn to live here, you feel quite sheltered
between these hills, I feel quite safe here, you've got the river nearby to give you water,
this flat land here for grazing and maybe growing of crops, and in these steep
walls of the glenny their side, and if I look to the, I should be where I'm looking,
I'm looking to the east, I'm looking along the glen, and the road, which currently runs along it,
falls to the path, for an old drovers road where people took cattle from the Isle of Sky,
and they would have moved inland through the Highlands, and then down maybe to the lowlands
to go to markets to sell the cattle, and they would probably have to avoid cattle rustlers on route
as well, and interestingly, before they had ferries or even a bridge to Sky, which is an island
of Sky, which they now do, these cattle herders would chain their cattle together, or rubbed
and get them to swim the short distance between the Isle of Sky and the mainland,
the shortest distance is just in your glen elge and is probably, I don't know,
how far is it, maybe a hundred meters, not far, but still some, you have to choose your time
carefully to get the current straight, so yeah, so that's my little audio tour of a broth,
I hope you liked it, if you ever do come to Scotland, I'd recommend having a look to glen elge,
most people go over to Sky, it gets very busy there, but do come to glen elge, the pub,
the glen elge is very good, the broths are well worth seeing as I've said, and just along from the
broths, you can, there's a little microbrewery and a place that sells pizzas and coffee, now come on,
I can probably read you people, surely, that is enough to make you want to come to this beautiful
place, okay, well, let's make that loose-signing out, if you like this, tell me about a special
place that's near you and do a show with your own, okay, bye-bye.
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