Stanydale Temple

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Stanydale (Gruting, HU 285 502) is the best known although not the biggest ancient settlement sites in West Mainland Shetland. The main feature is the so called Stanydale Temple an oval house twice as big as the oval houses lying next to it. A fourth and better preserved oval house is right on the track leading to the site.

Pottery found on the site indicates that the houses were in use for a very long time from Late Neolithic right through the Bronze Age.

The main building shows two post-holes in its centre which might have supported some kind of timber roof - a very unusual construction within a nearly woodless environment like the Shetland islands of those days. The size of the building, the entrance situition similar tp the facades of the so called heel-shaped cairns and the sophisticated construction of the roofing led the excavator to suggest that this building was used as a "temple" but it might have served as some kind of a chieftains house or an assembly hall as well.