Barnyards sits within the extensive Beauly Carse which occupies the flat-lying agricultural land from the Beauly to Muir of Ord railway line and the River Beauly (east-west axis), and from beneath the degraded cliff-line and slope at Windhill to the south of Beauly Village (north-south axis). These are considered to be marine deposits from around 6,500 BP (before present).
The highest shorelines from this episode sit along the railway line at around 9.5m OD, with intermediate shorelines formed at 7.5m, 5.9m, 4.9m, and 3.1m, as they stepped down eastwards across the carselands, as the sea retreated to its present level and position.
To the north, the GCR Site is revised and provides a discrete additional location incorporating details of the degraded cliff and slope between the Lateglacial and Holocene shorelines.
From a series of boreholes carried out along line A - B (Figure 7.20 on the map refers), the presence of a sequence of marine and terrestrial deposits was established, the oldest dating from the late Devensian some 13,000 BP, followed by several significant fluctuations in relative sea level positions as the last ice wasted from the Beauly Firth contributing to sea-level rise and as the land rose recovered from ice-loading (isostatic adjustment).