Note
Date 25 March 2015 - 28 November 2016
Event ID 1044316
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044316
Situated on the summit of a low hill rising from the SE bank of the River Findhorn, this fort follows the contour around the flat-topped summit, which describes a sinuous S-shape on plan. The perimeter is largely reduced to two stony scarps separated by a terrace typically about 1.5m wide, but opinions on its true character vary, Angus Graham and Gordon Childe describing it in 1943 as a single rampart, the RCAHMS investigators drawing up the plan in 1956 for the Survey of Marginal Lands as two walls, and Alan Ayre for the OS in 1971 suggesting that the two scarps were so close together that they were perhaps the remains of a single structure. Nevertheless, in 1943 a slit trench dug into the inner, which in places forms a bank of rubble rising 0.6m above the level of the interior, revealed pieces of vitrified stone, and other pieces were observed in the SE sector in 1956, indicating that there is at the very least a timber-laced wall here. Ayre also noted traces of scarps on the slopes below the S and W flanks of the SW end of the fort, possibly representing the remains of outer ramparts blocking the easiest line of approach. The interior, which was under plough until about 1906, measures about 275m in length along a medial line by about 45m transversely (0.7ha). A gap in the S arc of the SW end, which is approached obliquely up the slope from the SW by a trackway may be an entrance, but a second gap noted by Ayre at the NE end does not appear on the plan drawn up in 1956 and may not be original.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 28 November 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2916
