A crannog!

We are taking a short holiday based in Ballater on Royal Deeside. Today we enjoyed a walk around Loch Kinord. The  loch, has a number of small islands, one of which near the north-east shore is artificial. It's an old crannog, a loch dwelling where a large hut sat on a man-built platform of timbers and rocks, once connected to the shore by a narrow causeway. Around 2.000 years ago, Iron Age people using dug-out oak canoes built it by pushing large oak trunks into the loch bed and piling layers of stone, earth and timber on top, to form the base. A large hut was then built on stakes above the water. The crannog stayed in use until medieval times when King Malcolm kept prisoners here in the 11th century.