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Note
Date 3 April 2015 - 18 October 2016
Event ID 1044325
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044325
This fortification encloses the broad summit of Little Conval, the conical hill rising up due W of Dufftown. The character of the defences is not entirely clear, for while Richard Feachem identified this as the remains of an unfinished hillfort, with a rubble bank some 3m in maximum breadth representing the incomplete rampart round most of the circuit, but with only marker trenches about 1.2m in breadth and up to 0.3m in depth to complete the circuit on the NE and set out up to three outer lines elsewhere on the N and E, a more recent visit by RCAHMS investigators concluded that it was more likely that these features had supported massive palisades. The inner enclosure is oval on plan, measuring about 210m from N to S by 120m transversely (2ha) within the rubble bank, and is encircled by a second trench at a distance ranging from 5m and 14m outside it. Gaps in this outer trench on the ESE and SW probably mark the positions of entrances, though there are no corresponding breaks in the rubble bank, perhaps indicating that it is a later construction. In addition to these two lines, another two trenches cut across the spine of the hill on the N at intervals of 10m and 15m to protect the easiest line of approach up a relatively gentle slope, the inner swinging around the E flank where its line is apparently taken up by a stony bank that turns down the slope on the SE and peters out in an area of small field plots. The interior is featureless.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2933
