The complete index
All twenty-one entries
The whole roster in one place, in the order the sections run. The homepage carries a selection; this page carries everything.
01 · The Chain
- A message round the island in a nightEach tower was sited to see its neighbours, so a fire lit on one could be answered along the whole coast. The network is the point; any single tower is just a link.
- Siting by sightlineHeight, headland and horizon — the three things that decided where one went.
- The shape of a towerRound, battered, one raised doorway and a vaulted chamber. Why each of those is structural rather than decorative.
- The raised doorEntry above ground level, reached by a ladder that could be pulled up.
- The terraceThe working surface on top, and what was kept there.
- What a garrison wasTwo or three men, supplied irregularly, on a rota nobody enjoyed.
02 · Dressed Stone
- Quarry to quoinGranite split from the outcrop the building stands on, dressed square only where it has to be — corners, jambs, lintels — and left rough everywhere else.
- Wedge slotsLines of cut slots on an outcrop, the clearest evidence of how it was split.
- The lintelOne stone spanning an opening, and how its length sets the window.
- Mortar or noneWhere lime was used and where the wall simply stands on friction and weight.
- RoofingStone slabs where they could be got, tile where they could not.
03 · The Threshing Year
- The paved circleA flat stone floor built on an exposed spur so the wind could take the chaff away.
- Why it is exposedWinnowing needs wind, so the floor is sited for weather rather than convenience.
- Chestnut as grainWhere wheat would not grow, chestnut was dried, milled and eaten as flour.
- The drying houseA small building with a slatted upper floor and a slow fire beneath it.
- The millWater-driven stones, and the leat that fed them.
04 · The Herding Year
- Up and back downFlocks moved to high pasture for the summer and back to the coast for the winter, and the buildings follow that movement.
- The stone hutA corbelled drystone shelter built without timber or mortar.
- The sheepfoldA drystone enclosure sited by water and shelter rather than by boundary.
- Cheese on the mountainMaking at altitude because the milk could not be carried down.
- The pathsRoutes worn by animals over centuries, and how they read in the ground.