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Note
Date 21 January 2015 - 18 October 2016
Event ID 1044239
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044239
This fort is situated on an elongated hillock at the NNW end of the Skerinish peninsula. The ground falls away steeply all along the WSW flank, ultimately down to the loch shore, while on the ENE the hillock is separated from the rising ground to the E by a deep natural hollow. The visible remains comprise two principal elements: what is probably a heavily-robbed broch; and an earlier fort. The broch occupies the southern end of the interior of the fort, which measures about 95m from NNW to SSE by a maximum of 25m transversely (0.19ha), and is divided in half by a later transverse wall roughly midway along its length. The innermost defences of the fort comprise an inner wall, now reduced to little more than a band of rubble with occasional outer facing-stones, which can be traced along the margins of the summit and measures about 3m in thickness; this is best preserved around the NNW half, but it probably extended around the edge of the precipitous SSE end, where it is overlain by the ruins of the broch. On the ENE flank below the inner wall there are possible traces of an outer wall, but at its S end this seems to have been cut out by the internal ditch of a major outer defence set at the foot of the slope to encompass the whole of the E half of the circuit. The ditch increases in breadth southwards from 4m to a maximum of 9m where it terminates adjacent to an entrance on the lip of the slope dropping away to the W; it is accompanied by an upcast rampart on its counterscarp. The route from this entrance to the summit probably followed a terrace at the foot of the cliffs on the SW; access to this terrace, however, is partly blocked by a line of boulders opposite the terminal of the ditch. In 1921 RCAHMS investigators depicted eight structures within the interior, but the OS felt unable to identify any of them as the remains of a hut-circle. The defences evidently represent several phases of construction, the latest element probably being the transverse wall across the interior, though whether this was contemporary with the occupation of the broch, as suggested by the OS, or is part of the later pattern of field-banks in the vicinity, is unknown.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2731
