Field Visit

Date 31 March 2016

Event ID 1013531

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1013531

Strathearn Fort Survey

The remains of this fort occupy the summit and slopes of Dun Knock, known locally as ‘The Dunnock’, an ENE to WSW orientated glacial knoll immediately SE of Dunning that appears to comprise mainly sands and gravels. ‘Dun Knock’ is named on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Perthshire 1866, Sheet CIX), but the writer of the contemporary Name Book summarised what was then known about the site when he stated ‘Whether there ever was a Camp on its Summit there is now no account either Traditional or otherwise existing’ (Perthshire, Volume 26, page 61). The presence of the fort was confirmed only as recently as 1978 when the cropmarks of multiple defences on its north side were recorded by the RCAHMS aerial survey programme. More recently (in 2008, 2009 and again in 2015), the fort has been investigated as part of Glasgow University’s Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot (SERF) project, with excavation demonstrating not only the degree to which the defences have been eroded but also the variation in construction techniques used and the probability that the earthworks represent more than one period of construction. The fort was surveyed by HES (Survey and Recording) in March 2016.

Roughly D-shaped on plan, with the chord of the D formed by a steep natural slope on the SSE, the fort has measured about 100m from ENE to WSW by a maximum of 45m within a rampart or wall that has been completely ploughed out on the N and has been reduced to little more than an outer-facing scarp in that part of the fort presently lying within woodland. The cropmarks that are visible on aerial photographs indicate that the defences on the north, including an entrance on the NE, comprised at least four ditches which would have provided material to construct accompanying inner banks. However, elsewhere around the knoll, where the natural slopes are steeper, the defences may have been designed without ditches. This would go some way to explaining the terraced, close-set nature of the surviving features on the west, south and east.

The fort is bisected along its long axis by a post-and-wire fence that has succeeded a stone wall that is depicted on the 1st edition map and which, except for its WSW end, has been reduced to footings. As the modern fence still does, that wall separated arable ground to the north from woodland to the south. The fact that the footings of this wall are set well below the level of the ground surface to the south indicates that a considerable amount of soil loss had already taken place on the north side of the hill even before the wall was built. The remains of both rig-and-furrow and terraces are another indicator of a very long history of cultivation on and around the knoll. To the south of the fence, in the flattish interior of the fort, there are rigs up to about 7m in breadth which are aligned with the long axis of the knoll and which spill over the line of the inner rampart at both the WSW and ENE ends. The terraces, which measure up to 12m in breadth, sweep along the lower slopes of the knoll from the ESE around to the ENE where they have been truncated by the modern arable field.

The fort has also been affected by the digging of sand and gravel pits. One of these – at the south-east corner of the summit, though not actually depicted on the 1st edition of the map, is marked by an indentation in the 300 ft contour. A narrow track links this pit with the bottom of the slope. A second, much larger and deeper, pit has removed a large portion of the south-west flank of the knoll. It is not depicted on either the 1st or 2nd edition maps and it is probably of early 20th century date. Two small pits, one on either side of the stone wall that descends the WSW flank of the hill, are undated but must post-date the wall.

Visited by HES Survey and Recording (GG, AMcC, JRS) 31 March 2016.