Lee Pen

Lee Pen

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Lee Pen, Innerleithen.

Broch or Dun? Cell? and Signal Station? at NT 326 381.

On the shoulder of Lee Pen, there is a flat area which has some interesting structures/shapes on it. I looked at this some 18 years ago, took pictures and did some hopeful guesswork. The following comments are based on that but allow for a somewhat dodgy memory since that time. Climbing that hill to revisit the site is not a feasible option.

A. Broch/Dun

The broch or dun appears in the bulk of the pictures. My reading of it is a 9m diameter circular indent in the ground surrounded by a wall base 4m to 5m thick. Some parts of the division between the two, show as a revetment or retaining wall. There is a tapering entrance on the east side. This is marked by white tape on the photographs.

Unfortunately, the centre of the structure has been used as a dump for stones gathered from the field when it was first cultivated and there is no way of telling the depth of the original structure without excavation.

There is a similar but smaller structure about 70m to the south-east.

B. Cell?

Outside the east side of the outer circle of the broch/dun, there is a small room? about 2.5m by 1.8m. This has walls around 0.8m thick and a doorway on the north-east end.

The imaginative mind would place this as the Cell of St Ronan.

C. Signal Station.

South of the broch/dun in the Kirklands Hill field, there is a squashed-doughnut outline similar to that of a Roman signal station. From this spot, the Eildon Hill North known signal station can be seen through a cleft in the hills to the east and my hypothesized one above Easter Happrew to the west.

I could be wrong of course.

9 January 2013. Walter Elliot.

To navigate to the site you can download a gpx file below, for instructions see the Visiting Sites page.

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