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Note
Date 2 March 2015 - 13 December 2016
Event ID 1044264
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044264
This fort, which is overlain by a broch and latterly utilised for a medieval castle, occupies the elongated crest of a rocky and steep-sided hillock that stands at the foot of the mountain on the SW shore of Loch Broom where it narrows SE of Ullapool. Excavations in 1967-8 by Euan MacKie focused on the broch, which he demonstrated overlay the wall that probably forms the E end of the fort; at this point it measured some 4.5m in thickness and was pierced by an entrance 1.2m to 1.5m wide with a floor of steeply sloping native rock. The wall of the fort here showed no signs of heat or burning, though traces of vitrifaction can be found elsewhere on the circuit at the W end of the fort, and in what seems to be an outer line of defence crossing the ridge to the E; this latter was a timber-laced wall 2.4m thick and the excavation not only exposed large masses of vitrifaction in its core, but also two rows of horizontal beam-holes in its inner face. In view of the scale of vitrifaction in this outwork and probably in the W end too, it is curious that the wall beneath the broch was apparently unburnt and raises the possibility that the various elements of the fort that have been identified do not all belong to the same phase of fortification. Indeed, it is not possible to trace the line of the wall along the flanks of the hill, though its line cannot have strayed far from the lip of the summit area. Thus it is possible that the wall exposed by MacKie beneath the broch belongs to a much smaller enclosure occupying the very summit of the hillock. Leaving this caveat aside, the fort is probably roughly oval on plan, enclosing an area measuring about 75m from E to W by about 35m transversely (0.25ha). The overlying broch measures 10.6m in diameter within a wall about 3.6m in thickness and in addition to a mural stair on the WSW had an entrance passage with two sets of door-checks and a guard chamber on the ESE. Beneath its floor MacKie uncovered what may have been an earlier hearth and a mass of overlying charcoal that he believed were associated with the destruction of the fort.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 13 December 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2864
