Reference
Date 1890
Event ID 1014491
Category Documentary Reference
Type Reference
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1014491
Knowhead, (native) fort. This fort is the fourth and most important of the group, being situated not on the crest but in the elevated and slightly hollowed plateau that is half encircled by the crest. This plateua is, for the most part, a half-drained marsh which surrounds the fort, except where the rampart comes to the edge of the plateau and descends a little way down the hollow through which runs a little rill, passing Knowhead Farm to join the Mill Burn. This rill takes its origin by two heads in marshy ground within the fort, the interior of which is higher elsewhere and tolerably dry.
The single enclosing mound is an irregular oval, about 1200 paces round, but as the surface is very rough the paces were probably short. The Statistical Account [OSA] gives the area as about 6 acres. The mound, though it rarely exceeds 2, and never 3 or 4, feet in height, is of a tolerably uniform breadth, averaging 35 ft (10.7m), and, although thinly covered with moss and heather, consists of little else than stones, as shown in many breaks and several accidental sections. The stones are for the most part smallish, but every here and there large blocks occur, and it seems no improbable hypothesis that we have here the remains of a massive wall which has been cast down and spread out for the purpose of plundering the large stones. Indeed, how else can we account for the great zone of stones, 35 ft (1-.7m) wide and only 2 or 3 ft high? Probably the remains were in better preservation at the end of the last century (when noted by OSA and New Statistical Account - NSA).
On the NW there is a singular re-entering curve in the oval, opposite to which, and about 35 yds (32m) outside the line of the oval is a detached circular work 150 ft (45.7m) in diameter with a single vallum , 15 ft (4.6m) wide and 2 to 4 in height. This detached work is planted entirely in marsh, which even occupies the inside of it. There is some appearance of a causeway connecting it with the main work and a fragment of mound halfway between.
D Christison 1890.
