Note
Date 19 February 2015 - 13 December 2016
Event ID 1044191
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044191
The large headland known as St John's Point is defended by a substantial rampart and ditch barring access from the S. The rampart is massive in Scottish terms, forming a bank some 12m in thickness at the base by 3m in height and is probably fronted by an equally broad ditch, though of the latter all that can be seen is a shallow hollow about 10m in breadth with a later turf field-bank extending along its counterscarp. The interior measures about 210m from N to S by up to 140m transversely (2.25ha), and is indented by deep geos along its seaward end to form three smaller promontories. Turf field-banks extend around the margin of the headland and much of its surface has been cultivated in rigs, but aerial photographs reveal traces of a ploughed-down arc of bank enclosing an area about 30m across in the angle between the cliffs on the E and the rampart on the S. This enclosure is the 'Grave Yard' annotated on the 1st edition OS 25-inch map (Caithness 1877, sheet 2.11), which places a cross marking the site of St John's Chapel at its centre. This attribution has been transposed to the remains of a building visible beneath the E end of a stone field-dyke that surmounts the rampart. In 1910 Alexander Curle noted that this was locally said to be a chapel, but he also observed that it was not correctly oriented and doubted the attribution (RCAHMS 1911, 20-1, no.56). Nevertheless, in 1919 John Nicolson uncovered the W gable end to reveal a central entrance and what he described as a slab-lined grave, with its head to the W and a reused cross-slab in one side (Nicolson 1922); the stratigraphic relationship between the chapel and the rampart was not recorded. Apart from a second compartment at the E end of this building, the only other feature visible within the interior of the fort are the remains of a rectangular building platform on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the N side of the small bay that cuts into the headland from the E (ND 31117 75151).
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 13 December 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2833
