Note
Date 23 February 2015 - 18 May 2016
Event ID 1044116
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044116
This fort occupies a cliff-girt promontory which has almost been reduced to an isolated stack by the erosion of the narrow neck linking its NW end to the mainland. Some 60m long, this neck is now no more than 25m wide at its seaward end, where a wall reduced to a bank about 4m in thickness by 0.5m in height cuts across its spine behind a shallow natural depression. At the landward end of the neck on the SE a deep natural gully that descends almost to the level of the shore has been adopted as a ditch outside a second wall, which has again been reduced to little more than a grass-grown bank and measures up to 5m in thickness by 0.4m in height. Another bank on the landward lip of the gully may be the remains of an additional rampart, though Raymond Lamb thought this was the remains of a later wall associated with a rectangular building at its NE end (1980, 77). The exact position of the entrance through the defences is uncertain; Lamb again thought there was a gap in the centre of the inner (1980, 22, fig 7), but the upright slabs the OS surveyor interpreted as part of a gatehouse or forework in front of it have been identified more recently by RCAHMS investigators as the remains of a rectangular building and the gap may be no more than disturbance. Both Lamb and the OS surveyor placed the entrance through the second wall in a gap towards its NE end. The interior is largely featureless, measuring about 180m from NE to SW by 75m transversely (1.21ha), rising westwards to a broad summit surmounted by a marker cairn and a modern drystone enclosure, but a small structure with two kerbstones can be seen in the cliff-edge 20m SW of the modern marker cairn on its summit. This was interpreted by the RCAHMS investigators as the remains of a cairn and geophysical survey by Orkney College revealed anomalies here and where burnt material was observed eroding out of the cliff.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2837
