Note
Date 1 March 2016 - 1 June 2016
Event ID 1044087
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044087
The broch on the low cliff-line of Hoga Ness has been reduced largely to a mound of rubble, but the outer defences are relatively spectacular, comprising an inner wall with two external ditches and a medial rampart drawn in an arc to bar access to the promontory from the N and E. The outer rampart returns and unites with the inner wall around the terminal of the ditch on the E side of an entrance causeway on the NNW, while W of this entrance the wall and the ditch run straight out to the cliff-edge, the ditch exploiting a natural cleft running in from the sea. In behind the wall at this point this W sector of the interior his heavily eroded, and even a conservative restoration of the original edge suggests that the broch stood eccentrically on the E side of the enclosed area. The remains of the inner wall cannot be traced all the way round this eastern side, and the inner ditch, which is about 7m in breadth, stops short of the cliif-edge, though two slighter banks of rubble fill the gap; whether these are blocking an earlier entrance or the ditch is unfinished and these banks are perhaps the remains of an earlier perimeter is unclear. While the outer defences are conventionally interpreted as outworks to the broch, they are certainly not concentric to it and they may once have independently enclosed a much larger area measuring at least 40m deep from NE to SW by 50m transversely (0.15ha).
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 01 June 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC4179
