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Dun Beag is an iron-age broch situated at the north end of a small rocky knoll. The broch consists of a drystone tower with a diameter of around 18.6 metres with walls about 4 metres thick at the base. The broch currently stands to a maximum height of 2 metres.
The interior has a diameter of about 11 metres, and the entrance is on the east side. Internally three openings are visible in the broch wall. One leads to a small chamber; a second leads to a long narrow gallery within the wall; and a third leads to the stone stair of which some twenty steps survive.
The broch was visited by Thomas Pennant in 1772, and it was still a substantial structure, with a height of perhaps 4 metres. Around half of its wall height has been lost since the 18th century. The broch was excavated by the Countess Vincent Baillet de Latour between 1914 and 1920. Some 200 tons of earth and stones were removed from the broch and all the soil was sifted through the excavators' fingers. The standard of recording and publication was poor. Finds included many stone implements and utensils, a gold ring, bronze objects, a piece of folded sheet lead, iron and glass objects, a borer of bone, a pick made from an antler, much pottery and a stone cup. Several hundred glass beads were found although they are not thought to be prehistoric. Coins of Henry II, Edward I, James VI, George II and George III have been discovered, and it is possible that the broch was in use until comparatively recently.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.