Description
The monument comprises an abandoned township of post-medieval date, situated on a SW-facing hillside above the NE bank of the Ballinloan Burn at about 230-270m OD.
Most of the remains are concentrated in an area of about 5ha, in which there are at least twenty-three buildings, many of them grouped into farmsteads, linked by trackways and set within stone-walled fields scattered with field-clearance heaps. The First Edition Ordnance Survey map in 1867 depicts almost all of these buildings (twenty unroofed buildings); only two are shown as roofed.
Within the main area of settlement four farmsteads can be identified, each comprising five or six buildings loosely clustered around an irregularly shaped yard. Two of these are located on a terrace immediately above the Ballinloan Burn, while the other two are situated on the hillside to the NE. Two further buildings stand in isolation at the W edge of the site.
The buildings are all broadly similar in construction: roughly rectangular in plan, with square corners, and in most cases gable-ended. They have faced-rubble walls mostly measuring 0.6-0.75m in thickness, and cruck slots are visible in a few cases. Many of them are set into the hillside, or terraced up on their downhill side.
On the basis of size, the buildings can be divided into two distinct groups. In the first group there are five long buildings measuring internally 20.3-29.5m in length and between 3.8-4.5m in width. Each of the four farmsteads has one of these long buildings present on the N side of the yard. The fifth long building is one of the two isolated buildings at the W edge of the site.
They are all divided into two or more rooms or compartments, and most of the compartments have separate entrances, which in all cases are in the S side wall, opening onto the yard. Two of these buildings have fireplaces, in both cases in the W gable. In two of the long buildings there is a central drain that runs the length of the E compartment, indicating that they functioned as byres.
The other eighteen buildings measure internally between 5.2-14.3m in length and 2.5-4.4m in width. Most of them are clustered close to the long buildings, and serve to define, at least in part, the limits of each steading's yard.
Several of the larger examples are divided into two compartments, and there is evidence of an upper floor in at least two cases. Occasionally features survive which suggest a particular function: a fireplace in one building indicates domestic occupation; while the opposed entrances in four buildings (one in each farmstead) points to their use as barns.
The area proposed for scheduling comprises the remains described and an area around them within which related material may be expected to survive. It is irregular in shape, with maximum dimensions of 255m N-S by 410m WSW-ENE, as marked in red on the accompanying map.