Stone gets stolen. Across Scotland the great Iron Age towers known as brochs have stood as quarries for centuries - their fitted blocks pulled out one by one to build farm walls, byres, churches, harbour breakwaters. The brochs that survive in good condition tend to be the ones nobody could reach. Dun Bharabhat on Great Bernera is one of those. Built on a small islet in a small loch, connected to the shore only by a 30-metre causeway, its masonry was preserved by the simple inconvenience of fetching it.
Dun Bharabhat - pronounced Varavat - sits on an islet in Loch Bharabhat on the island of Great Bernera, which in turn lies just off the west coast of the Isle of Lewis. There is a second Dun Bharabhat further north on Lewis itself, also Iron Age, also on a small loch, and the names are sometimes confused. This one is on Bernera. It stands high above the surface of the loch, its walls rising directly from the islet's edge, with the causeway reaching out 30 metres to firm shore. Whoever built it 2,000 years ago wanted defence and water at the same time. They got both.
Strictly speaking Dun Bharabhat is a galleried dun, or what some archaeologists call a semi-broch. It has many of the features of a true broch - the double-walled drystone construction, the gallery built into the thickness of the wall, the staircase climbing within the masonry - but it is D-shaped rather than fully circular. The walls are of uneven thickness, the plan is asymmetrical, and the overall footprint is smaller than the classic broch dimensions: 17 metres by 13 metres externally, with walls standing to a maximum height of 3.4 metres. The building is badly ruined, half-buried in its own collapse, but its essential features are still readable on the ground. A ground-level gallery can be seen at the east end of the high wall through a surviving opening. A stairway runs up the masonry at the same point. Above, the high wall preserves the remains of two further superimposed galleries - the architectural signature of broch construction. At the west end, the opening of a longitudinal gallery or cell running northeast from the now-buried entrance can still be made out. From the shore the gaps in the masonry reveal the hollow walls.
Despite its ruined appearance, Dun Bharabhat is considered one of the best preserved of all the island duns of the Hebrides. The reason is simply that nobody could be bothered to break it up. To reach the building you have to cross the causeway, which is submerged at most water levels. To carry stones back to the mainland you would have to load them onto a small boat or wait for the loch to fall low enough to walk them across. Compared to the brochs along Lewis's coastal roads, which were quarried for centuries, the Bharabhat tower simply was not worth the trouble. The result is that the original masonry techniques - the inner and outer faces, the rubble core, the corbelled galleries, the bonding stones - can still be read from what remains. The Hebridean brochs and duns are a regional architectural tradition unique in the world. Dun Bharabhat is one of their clearest surviving examples.
Coordinates 58.22 N, 6.84 W. Dun Bharabhat occupies a small islet in Loch Bharabhat on the southern part of Great Bernera, accessible from the shore by a 30-metre causeway that is often submerged. Nearest airport is Stornoway (EGPO), about 21 nm east-northeast. Recommended viewing altitude 1,000-2,500 ft. The site shows from the air as a small circular ruin on a tiny island in a freshwater loch, set against the rolling moorland of Great Bernera. The cliff-edge stones of Callanish VIII are about 1 nm to the northeast. Expect frequent low cloud and strong westerlies.