Site in Focus - O'er da Wast Hill

New Hill Farmstead

My favourite place for archaeology is our own West Hill, just over the hill from Asta. There is everything there from stone circles, a ‘temple’, burial cairns, farmsteads and even strange alignments of stones with the sun. Everything from Bronze Age to just a few hundred years ago. Many of these sites have been explored either by me and my brother, or by my dad and grandad with what was known as The Archaeology Society.

One site we recently found is a possible prehistoric farmstead that has not been fully explored, yet. Looking at a small standing stone we call the Kyucker, we realised it was part of a field boundary. Following it SSE it goes to a burial cairn but following it roughly north it seems to end in the middle of nowhere. On closer inspection the boundary leads to a circular enclosure with mounds inside. There are similar mounds a little bit further east, but I think they are natural outcrops of limestone, and this enclosure is different because it has a stone wall around most of it. Looking around from this site it would be an excellent place for a small, enclosed farm, if the land was worked better in the past.

Gallow Hill Enclosure

It’s sometimes strange how you find sites. Dad and I used to try to find fresh clean bits once a week to feed sheep on so they wouldn’t be eating on a guttery mess. After a couple of days feeding the sheep here, we realised this was a round manmade site. We had no idea what it was, there is nothing there except a 12m diameter ring. A while later archaeologists came for a look at other sites over the West Hill. They all thought this circle reminded them of a burial place on Unst or Fetlar. Sometime after, the subject of the gallows above Scalloway was being spoken about and it was only when I mentioned the gallows here on our hill that I realised they wouldn’t bury the remains of criminals in the kirkyard, they would stick them in a hole close by. Is this the gallows burial site? If not, what is it?

The Gallow Hill circular enclosure (marked with yellow flags in picture above) is 12m in diameter and marked by an approximately 1m wide and 20cm high drystone wall or earthen bank.

It is approximately 200m NNW, and downslope, of the summit of Gallow Hill where executions are said to have taken place. This is in association with the Law Ting Holm below the hill and at the north end of the Loch of Tingwall. It is earlier and unconnected to the Gallow Hill west of Scalloway where people convicted of witchcraft were executed. A new memorial now marks this latter location.