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Note
Date 13 March 2015 - 18 May 2016
Event ID 1044301
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044301
This fort displays some of the clearest evidence of its unfinished character to be found anywhere in Scotland. Occupying the crest of a steep-sided ridge towering above the river on the N side of Strath Rory, its unfinished defences comprise two elements: firstly a wall that was evidently intended to enclose the summit area of the ridge extending westwards from a precipitous cleft across its axis; and secondly a more ragged outer line contouring between 15m and 20m outside it. The inner wall, which was never begun along the S flank, displays a remarkable progression around the N flank, from 1.2m high and complete with wall core faced inside and out to a maximum thickness of 3.8m adjacent to the entrance on the W, to a sector where the facing blocks had been put in place without the full height of core and are now cowped backwards like stacked dominoes onto a layer of rubble, and finally tailing off into to the eastern sector where no more than a rough and intermittent band of rubble marks its course. The area to be enclosed measures about 220m from ENE to WSW by 80m transversely (1.6ha) and there may have been a second entrance at the E end of the N side. The outer line is of rather different character, comprising rubble pile crudely in places along the leading edge of a quarried terrace that has been cut back irregularly into the slope, but unlike the inner, this can also be traced along the S flank of the hill, turning sharply back at the W end no more than 10m outside the inner line. It too has an entrance at the W end, and possibly another opposite the gap in the inner at the E end. Nevertheless, the lines are sufficiently eccentric to each other that it is possible that they are not contemporary, in which case the continuous outer circuit suggests that it is the earlier, enclosing an area of about 2.2ha. The interior is rough and peat covered and generally obscured by deep heather.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2899
