[Illustration: Fig. 166.—Section of the elevation of Broch in Glenbeg, near Glenelg. (From Plan by Sir H. Dryden.)]
At the distance of less than a mile up the valley on the same side, and placed on a considerable eminence, is another ruined structure of the same kind (Fig. 166), but more dilapidated. No part of the height now exceeds 25 feet. The diameter of the tower internally has been about 30 feet, and the wall is 12 feet thick. Traces of chambers on the ground floor are visible, but choked with rubbish. The door and stairs are gone. Three galleries remain in part. The first is 6 feet high and 4 feet wide, the second 6 feet high and 3½ feet wide, the third inaccessible and somewhat smaller.
These structures, so far as their distinctive features remain unobliterated, present a striking similarity alike in the manner of their construction and the nature of their arrangements to those of Mousa. They vary in certain details, as in size, in thickness of wall, in the presence of a guard-chamber in connection with the passage, but in all the essential features of plan, construction, and arrangements they are substantially the same.
[Illustration: Fig. 167.—Ground plan of doorway of Broch at Loch Duich, with its guard-chamber. (Wall 12 feet thick.)]
Near the head of Loch Duich, a few miles from Glenelg, is another ruined tower. It stands on the slope of an eminence close under a high crag. The lower part of the structure is entire, but little remains of its height. Its internal diameter is 31 feet, its thickness of wall 12 feet. The doorway is in the lower side of the building facing the N.E. It is 3 feet wide at the outside, and at 4 feet 3 inches within the outer plane of the wall (Fig. 167) there is a rebate for a door with checks formed of long slabs 9 inches thick, set edgewise in the wall. Behind these is a bar-hole on either side for a long stout bar. The hole, on one side, is long enough for the bar to lie in it permanently, and on the other only long enough to receive its end when pulled across behind a door either constructed of wood or formed of a slab of stone set up against the checks. On the S.E. side of the entrance passage (Fig. 168) is a doorway 18 inches wide and 3 feet high, giving [Illustration: Fig. 168.—Sectional elevation of S.E. side of entrance passage of the Broch at Loch Duich, showing doorway of guard-chamber, and bar-hole (wall 12 feet thick).] access to an oval guard-chamber constructed in the thickness of the wall, 12 feet long, 6 feet wide, and about 7 feet high, roofed in the usual manner by overlapping masonry and flat stones laid across. There are traces of other chambers on the ground floor, and part of a gallery remains over the entrance, but all above is gone. The masonry of this tower is more massive than that of those in Glenbeg, but the general plan and manner of construction are precisely similar in character. In point of fact there is so little deviation from the typical plan of construction among all the examples that are known, that the detailed descriptions of them are for the most part repetitions of features that are closely similar. But as we are dealing with buildings that are in ruins, and, as it appears, with a class of buildings of which no complete example is now known to exist, it is important to determine if possible whether there may be sufficient ground for assigning to the class the general feature of height, of which, in the majority of cases, no direct evidence now remains.