Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland

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Date 2012 - 2016

Event ID 1041962

Category Project

Type Project

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1041962

The Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland was produced as part of a four year collaborative project between archaeologists at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Oxford, assisted by colleagues at University College Cork for Ireland.

The atlas contains data on 4,147 archaeological sites considered to be hillforts or possible hillforts spread across England, The Isle of Man, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk/

People and Organisations

Related Event(s)

Event	Type	Subtype	Notes	Date
1045387	DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNTS	NOTE	This fort is situated on a precipitous coastal promontory cut off from the land by a gully 6m in breadth by up to 1.7m in depth. The inner defence comprises a wall some 15m in length, reduced largely to a band of rubble 3.5m thick by 0.4m high, which extends from E to W along the seaward lip of the gully; occasional facing-stones and robber pits indicate an original thickness of about 2.2m. A second line of defence lies at the foot of the coastal escarpment on the landward side of the gully and comprises a bank 2.4m in thickness by 0.4m in height, which is flanked externally by two interlocking quarry scoops up to 3.4m in breadth and 0.4m in depth. Tapering into a narrow finger of rock at the seaward end, the fort measures a maximum of 56m in overall length from NE to SW by 17m transversely on the NE (0.036ha), but the occupiable area is much smaller, comprising little more than the floor of a shallow gully 9m broad sloping gently down to the rear of the wall (87 sq m = 0.0087ha). [...]	20 December 2013
1045400	DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNTS	NOTE	What may be a small fort is situated at the foot of a gentle W-facing slope in the angle between the coastal escarpment on the W and the gully of a small burn on the S. Heavily cultivated, little trace of the rampart is still visible, but the single ditch forms a hollow some 10m in breadth by 0.5m in depth, on the W emerging from the edge of the field into a natural gully 1.6m deep. The wedge-shaped interior measures about 34m from NE to SW by up to 45m transversely (0.06ha). [...]	20 December 2013
1045397	DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNTS	NOTE	This fort, which is overlain by a later enclosure, occupies a steep-sided promontory on the N side of Aldouran Glen, at this point a deeply-cut minor valley some 30m deep. The defences of the fort comprise up to three earthen ramparts with intervening ditches, which cut off a triangular area measuring 27m from NE to SW by a maximum of 23m transversely (0.03ha). The innermost rampart measures up to 5.4m in thickness by 0.8m in height and is flanked externally by a ditch 5.5m in breadth by 0.7m in depth. Outside this ditch there is the appearance of another rampart set beyond a berm from 1m to 3m wide, but this is almost certainly a later bank extending along the inner lip of a broad flat-bottomed outer ditch from 8.3m to 15.5m across. The bank turns outwards along the sides of the promontory to unite with a bank overlying the outermost rampart, thus exploiting the ditch to form an enclosure measuring some 42m in length. The outermost rampart forms a counterscarp on the outer lip of the outer ditch and is up to 4.7m thick by 1m high. The position of the original entrance is uncertain, and though there seems to be a gap between the terminals of the ramparts and the NW side of the promontory, traces of the inner ditch can be seen extending across it. [...]	20 December 2013

Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland

People and Organisations

Related Event(s)

References