Dun Beag

In 1772 the antiquarian Thomas Pennant visited Dun Beag and described a broch that was still substantially intact, its drystone walls reputedly standing to a height of about four metres — roughly twice what survives today. Pennant's account is the earliest detailed record of the tower, capturing it before further centuries of stone-robbing and weathering reduced its upper courses to their present state.

The following year, in 1773, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell passed close by during their celebrated tour of the Hebrides, and the broch they described near Ullinish is thought by later writers to have been Dun Beag itself. Their brief mention places the monument within one of the best-known travel narratives of eighteenth-century Scotland, linking a remote Skye tower to a much wider literary journey.

Between Pennant's visit and the twentieth century, roughly half of the broch's original wall height was lost, most likely to stone-robbing for local building as well as ordinary collapse. What had stood some four metres tall in 1772 had been reduced, by the time of formal investigation, to a stump a little over two metres high — a reminder of how quickly an unprotected monument can erode once attention moves elsewhere.

Between 1914 and 1920 the Countess Vincent Baillet de Latour excavated Dun Beag, removing an estimated 200 tons of earth and stone from within and around the tower. Every barrowload of spoil was sifted by hand through the excavators' fingers in search of small finds, an intensive method that recovered material a cruder dig would have missed, even though the standard of recording and publication fell well short of later archaeological norms.

The excavation produced a large assemblage of everyday and unusual objects: numerous stone implements and utensils, a gold ring, bronze fittings, a folded piece of sheet lead, iron and glass objects, a bone borer, an antler pick, quantities of pottery, and a stone cup. Several hundred glass beads also came to light, though these are not believed to be prehistoric in date, hinting at activity on the site well after the broch's original use.

Among the finds were coins of Henry II, Edward I, James VI, George II and George III, a spread running from the twelfth century into the eighteenth. Their presence suggests the broch, or the ground around it, remained in use or was regularly visited long after its Iron Age origins, rather than being abandoned and forgotten once prehistory ended.