Shiel Hill

Place-name:	Shiel
Suggested Meaning:	a rough shelter for sheep or cattle and their herds in a remote place
	Scots shiel ‘a rough shelter for sheep and their herds‘
Place-name:	Shiel Hill
	Place-Name: Shiel + SSE hill ‘hill’
Blaeu Coila (1654):	N/A
OS Name Books (1855-57):	Shiel Hill
Location:	Ordnance Survey (1893)

Shiel

Scots shiel ‘a rough shelter for sheep or cattle and their herds‘

The place-name element shiel has a number of variants including sheel and shield, all three forms of which are found in the parish of New Cumnock. The entry for shiel in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language reads [1] –

SHIEL, n., v.¹ Also shiell, sheul(l), sheel, sheil(e), schiel, shel(c); shield, sheild, she(e)ld. A sheepcot, a rough shelter for sheep or cattle and their herds in a remote place, specif. one used in the summer when sheep and cattle were removed to higher and more distant pastures

Dictionary of the Scots Language. 2004. Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd

The presence of the neighbouring Ewe Hill suggests that the shiel was a ‘rough shelter for sheep and shepherds‘ as opposed to one for cattle.

Canmore

The entry for Shiel Hill in CANMORE recorded two archaelogical visits to hill. The first in 1974 discovered a large turf-walled house along with four minor turf ‘huts’ and the site was designated as a homestead [2]. A later visit in 1980 could not identify the turf-walled house but did find small bothies and considered the site to be a minor settlement [3], which is a better fit with ‘a rough shelter for sheep or cattle and their herds in a remote place‘

Homestead: On Shiel Hill, a roughly rectangular enclosure, 77m by 75m, contains a large, oval, turf-walled house, 16.4m by 6.6m, with a D-shaped annexe on the W, 9m by 6.2m. Four minor turf ‘huts’ lie along the N Wall, and a further possible hut is in an annexed enclosure to the N.

Lonie and Newall, W and F. (1974d) ‘Homestead’, Discovery Excav Scot, 1974.

A small clearance cairn is at the centre of a number of sinuous field banks and three or four small bothies, but this site cannot be described as a homestead, rather a minor settlement site. The oval, turf-walled house was not identified.

Visited by OS (MJF) 27 September 1980.

CANMORE. Canmore ID 43535

Shiel Hill

Place-Name: Shiel + SSE hill ‘hill’

The entry in the Ayrshire Ordnance Survey Names Book (1855-57) for Shiel Hill reads –

A slight elevation west of Burnston

N.B. Marchburn farm shown in Map1 was later re-named Craigman as shown in Map 3.

The disused Craigman Mine to the south of Shiel Hill reflects the coal reserves in the area and these were later subjected to extensive opencast operations. In advance of an extension to an existing opencast mine a survey of the aforementioned locations in CANMORE was undertaken in November 2013, however by that time much of these sites had been destroyed by forestry planting [4].

Today, much of Shiel Hill, Ewe Hill and the farmhouses of Craigman and Burnston have disappeared from view, indeed Shiel Hill has been replaced by a large man-made lagoon [See Map 4 link below].

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

References

[1] Dictionary of the Scots Language. 2004. Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd. | shiel

[2] CANMORE, National Record of the Historic Environment, Canmore ID 43535|Shiel Hill Lonie and Newall, W and F. (1974d) ‘Homestead’, Discovery Excav Scot, 1974.

[3] CANMORE, National Record of the Historic Environment, Canmore ID 43535|Shiel Hill Visited by OS (MJF) 27 September 1980.

[4] CANMORE, National Record of the Historic Environment, Canmore ID 43535|Shiel Hill Becket, A. (2015) East Ayrshire, Branston Remainder, House of Water, New Cumnock, Survey, Discovery Excav Scot, New, vol. 15, 2014. Cathedral Communications Limited, Wiltshire, England. Page(s): 61

Maps

Reproduced with the Permission of National Library of Scotland

https://maps.nls.uk/

Map 1: Ordnance Survey Maps – Six-inch 1st edition, Scotland, 1843-1882 (1857)| Shiel Hill

Map 2: Ordnance Survey Maps – 25 inch 2nd and later editions, Scotland, 1892-1949 (1895) | Shiel Hill

Map 3: Ordnance Survey, 1:25,000 maps of Great Britain – 1945-1971 (1957) |Shiel Hill

Map 4: Ordnance Survey, 1:25,000 maps of Great Britain – 1945-1971 (1957) , Aerial View|Shiel Hill

Ordnance Survey Name Books

By Permission of Scotland’s Places

scotlandsplaces.gov.uk

Ayrshire OS Name Books (1855-57) Vol. 49| Shiel Hill