"A vegetation-covered Iron Age mound behind a Caithness farm, part of the dense prehistoric landscape of the Dunbeath hinterland"
Upper Borgue Broch
Dunbeath, Caithness, United Kingdom
Behind the farm of Upper Borgue in the Caithness countryside near Dunbeath, a large mound rises between three and four metres high. Beneath the grass and vegetation lies the ruin of an Iron Age broch, its curved outer wall face partially exposed on the western side, its entrance traceable on the east-southeast. Upper Borgue Broch has never been excavated, and its story remains largely unwritten. What is visible is a substantial structure, roughly nineteen metres in overall diameter, erected on a natural hillock with traces of an encircling outer wall. Like dozens of its counterparts across Caithness, it speaks of a time when drystone towers dominated this landscape.
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Quick Facts
Location
Dunbeath, Caithness, United Kingdom
Tradition
Site Type
Coordinates
58.2366, -3.5070
Last Updated
Feb 6, 2026
Upper Borgue Broch belongs to the Iron Age broch tradition of Caithness. It represents the typical, rather than the exceptional, broch experience: one of over two hundred such sites in the county, most unexcavated and vegetation-covered. Its significance lies precisely in this typicality. The Caithness landscape was defined by brochs during the Iron Age, with towers standing at regular intervals across the countryside. Upper Borgue is one element of this landscape-scale pattern.
Origin Story
The Iron Age community who built Upper Borgue Broch chose a natural hillock and raised a drystone tower roughly nineteen metres in diameter, surrounded by an outer encircling wall. The construction required significant communal labour and engineering skill. The community was part of the broader broch-building culture that dominated Caithness during the middle Iron Age, a culture characterised by the construction of these distinctive circular towers as the centrepieces of settlements.
Key Figures
RCAHMS surveyors
Spiritual Lineage
No continuous tradition connects the Iron Age builders to any modern community. The broch has been known to the farming community at Upper Borgue for generations but has received no formal archaeological attention beyond survey recording.
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