Baile Mhargait

As I cycled the steep climb into Bettyhill, my mind drifted back to our recent walk from Torrisdale, skirting the coast of Druim Chuibhe to Baile Mhargait, or Margaret’s Town. This region, as the map reveals, is abundant in prehistoric features. I stopped to take this photo.

On that walk, we found a large gravelly plateau, barren of vegetation, reminiscent of a building site, standing about twenty feet above the River Naver. Scattered across it were numerous prehistoric features, including enclosures, cists, cairns, and hut circles.

Baile Mhargait was inhabited until 1780 when encroaching sand forced the tenants to abandon it. In the early 1900s, a stormy winter swept away much of the sand, revealing numerous 18th-century structures of varying shapes and sizes¹ Baile Mhargait http://canmore.org.uk/site/5791 et al. .

This plateau’s sands and gravels were deposited by a glacier that once flowed into the Atlantic. Remarkably, for over four millennia, this landscape has remained largely unchanged. Sand has shifted over time, but otherwise, the area has escaped the transformations seen in other sites.

It is fortunate that this site has avoided industrial exploitation, unlike other estuaries where gravel has been extracted, such as its exportation to Shetland during the construction of the Sullom Voe oil terminal.

Interestingly, Ptolemy referred to a river “Nabaros” in 140 AD, a name derived from the root word “nabh,” meaning “cloud” or “wet cloud,” found in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. Scholars believe he was referring to the River Naver although there is no doubt that he never actually visited here

On our return, we climbed over Druim Chuibhe. Halfway up, perched on a cliff edge, lies Sandy Dun, an Iron Age broch, now a tumbled mass of stones²Sandy Dun http://canmore.org.uk/site/5786 . It can just be made out in the photo.

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  Baile Mhargait http://canmore.org.uk/site/5791 et al.
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  Sandy Dun http://canmore.org.uk/site/5786