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Note
Date 19 January 2015 - 16 November 2016
Event ID 1044247
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044247
The presence of a fortification in this area is first noted by the RCAHMS investigators preparing the County Inventory, including it under the heading of 'Sites', with a clear implication that there was little to be seen, 'near mouth of Ollach River' (RCAHMS 1928, 185, no.584). Subsequent fieldwork in 1961 by the OS placed it on the first promontory W of the mouth of the river, at the NGR supplied for this record, and it is this location that was revisited by Alan Ayre of the OS in 1971, but the depiction published by Ann MacSween, stemming from an undergraduate dissertation (1985, 53, fig 75), is difficult to reconcile with the topography of the promontory identified in the OS records, and might even be of the promontory immediately on the E of the mouth of the Ollach River; likewise her observation that 'very little of the walling remains' conflicts with the description by the OS of a single wall some 20m long and from 3.5m thick at its NW end to 3.9m at the SE end, where three course of the outer face still was still visible in 1971. The wall has been built along the crest of a rib of outcrop, thus exaggerating its height, and has an entrance 1.2m wide midway along its length. Ayre dismissed the earlier report that the wall contained a gallery. Constructed across the neck of the promontory, which is pierced by a natural arch, the interior measures no more than 20m from NW to SE by 12m transversely (0.02ha) and is evidently heavily eroded along its E flank
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 16 November 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2719
