The Broch of Cullingsburgh is an

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

broch A broch is an Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structure found in Scotland. Brochs belong to the classification "complex Atlantic roundhouse" devised by Scottish archaeologists in the 1980s. Their origin is a matter of some controversy. Origin ...

located in the

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the no ...

islands.

Location

Located on

Bressay Bressay ( sco, Bressa) is a populated island in the Shetland archipelago of Scotland. Geography and geology Bressay lies due south of Whalsay, west of the Isle of Noss, and north of Mousa. With an area of , it is the fifth-largest island in Shet ...

, off the east coast of mainland Shetland, Cullingsburgh Broch is situated on an elevated area of ground overlooking the Bay of Cuppa on the east coast of the island.

History

St Mary's church and yard built up the side of the old broch at Cullingsburgh - geograph

Very little is left of the broch. The later (now ruined) church of St. Mary was likely built of stones mined from it. The church of St. Mary had an associated settlement and cemetery. The site is a Scheduled Monument.

Archaeological Finds

The

Pictish Pictish is the extinct language, extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited num ...

Bressay Stone was found near St. Mary's Church in 1852. This is an upright,

schist Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock showing pronounced schistosity. This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a low-power hand lens, oriented in such a way that the rock is easily split into thin flakes o ...

slab with relief designs on the two broad sides and

ogham inscription Roughly 400 known ogham inscriptions are on stone monuments scattered around the Irish Sea, the bulk of them dating to the fifth and sixth centuries. Their language is predominantly Primitive Irish, but a few examples record fragments of the ...

s on the narrow sides. The inscription is reported to be a memorial for the daughter of a chieftain."Bressay"
Visit Shetland. Retrieved 19 October 2014. The Bressay Stone is now on display in the

National Museum of Scotland The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, and the adjacent Royal Scottish Museum (opened in ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

, however a replica of the stone is located inside the cemetery.

Notes

References

* ''Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland''
Cullingsburgh Broch
* ''Charlton, E (1855) 'On the ogham inscription from the island of Bressay, Shetland, 1853. Read before the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, April 6th, 1853', Archaeol Aeliana, 1st, vol.4: 150-156''

External links

Geograph photo and description
{{Broch Cullingsburgh Scheduled Ancient Monuments in Shetland Bressay