Publication Account

Date 1985

Event ID 1016252

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016252

RCAHMS: Exploring Scotland's Heritage - Lothian and Borders, 1985

On excavation Braidwood was found not to be a conventional hillfort but rather a timber palisaded settlement with secondary earthen banks, apparently unfinished (the outer bank is now almost ploughed out). With most earthen ramparts, the ditch lay on the outside with the cast earth within; here, however, the earlier palisades were used as outer retaining walls so that the new defences were dug from within-with the ditches, therefore, also within.

The earlier settlement is best described as a single wooden palisade enclosing an oval area of about 0.5 ha. The line of the bedding trench for this palisade is still visible on the ground as a shallow groove, and it was joined at its entrance to the second palisade, some 14m beyond, by connecting fences-providing a space between that might well have been used for impounding stock.

Also visible are traces of more than a dozen timberframed houses; they show up as circular or oval rings corresponding to the broad, shallow trenches in which the individual timber posts were set. Some of the houses may relate to the first period of settlement; those overlying the line of the palisade, however, must relate to the later phase and indicate a lengthy occupation span perhaps into the 1st or 2nd century AD. It should be remembered that the main Roman road from Carlisle and the Solway to Inveresk or Cramond on the Forth ran close to the east of the site, having passed through Annandale and Upper Clydesdale then round the south-east end of the Pentlands by Dolphinton and Carlops.

Information from 'Exploring Scotland's Heritage: Lothian and Borders', (1985).