Bu of Orphir Burnt Mound and Mill Dam 250m NW of Bu Farm Orphir, Scotland
Scheduled Monument Data
Bu of Orphir Burnt Mound and Mill Dam 250m NW of Bu Farm has been designated a scheduled monument in Scotland with the following information. Please note that not all available data may be shown here, minor errors and/or formatting may have occurred during transcription, and some information may have become outdated since scheduling.
- Historic Scotland ID
- SM0
- Name
- Bu of Orphir, burnt mound and mill dam 250m NW of Bu Farm
- Parish
- Orphir
- County
- Orkney Islands
- Easting
- 333324
- Northing
- 1004670
- Categories
- Industrial: farming, food production; Prehistoric domestic and defensive: burnt mound
- Date Listed
- 31 January 1938
- Date Amended
- 26 February 1996
Scheduled Monument Description
Text courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.
The monument comprises a burnt mound (a cooking place, probably of Bronze Age date) and a disused mill dam of recent date but occupying an older site, together with their surrounding area.
The burnt mound is largely grass-covered, and is crescentic on plan, with the concavity facing NNW. This element of the monument is already scheduled. The mill dam takes the form of a sub-rectangular hollow aligned NNW-SSE, with the SW side and S corner excavated and the NE side and E angle embanked. The mill lade flowed from the dam SE to the now disused mill at Bu of Orphir Farm, and formerly fed this buildings' predecessors, which originated in a Norse period mill recently identified by excavation just S of the public road. Geophysical survey has indicated the presence of archaeological deposits, including traces of former structures, in the area to the S and SE of the mill dam and burnt mound.
The area to be scheduled is irregular, bounded on the W by a modern fenceline and on the NE by the W bank of a small stream. Its other boundaries are not defined by visible features on the ground. The area has maximum dimensions of 190m NNW-SSE by 110m, to include the mill dam, burnt mound and area of archaeological potential as defined by geophysical survey, and is marked in red on the accompanying map extract.
