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Note

Date 23 April 2015 - 25 October 2016

Event ID 1044352

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044352

The presence of a fort with a vitrified wall was first noted in 1777 on this promontory forming the N side of Cullykhan Bay (Williams 1777, 67-9), but it is not shown on the 1st edition OS 25-inch map as such, and is otherwise noted only for also being the site of a medieval castle and a later artillery fortification. The promontory is girt with steep slopes and cliffs, its summit measuring 260m in overall length by a maximum of some 70m transversely at the W end, little more than 20m in the central sector occupied by the stump of the medieval keep, and widening to 47m at the roughly square E end; as defined, it is likely that it was once a promontory fortification enclosing up to 1ha. Apart from the medieval keep and the artillery fortification that occupied the seaward end of the promontory, the line of a grass grown rampart containing vitrified stone can be traced round at least two sides of the W or landward end, on the W and N respectively, perhaps forming a rather smaller rectilinear enclosure measuring internally about 54m from E to W by from 30m to 48m transversely (0.25ha). Excavations directed by Colvin Greig 1963-72 focused on this W portion and the keep, and revealed a complex history of occupation and fortification, though in the absence of new radiocarbon dates the precise chronology remains unclear, and the detail of the stratigraphic sequence is not yet published. Nevertheless, the burnt and partly vitrified timber-laced rampart overlay earlier deposits from which one charcoal sample returned a date of AD 420-640 (GU-2094), probably indicating that this phase of the fortifications was constructed in the early medieval period. Excavations on a knoll prolonging the neck of the promontory on the W, however, also uncovered a gateway in a stone wall with substantial vertical timbers set in its external face, the stumps of several of which survived in situ; one of these returned an earlier date correcting to 800-200 BC (BM-639). It seems to represent an earlier fortification on the promontory with an elaborate entrance. A timber palisade was also excavated immediately east of this, though whether as postulated by some writers (MacKie 1976, 219-20) there was ever a palisaded phase as such is uncertain. Occupation deposits sealed beneath the ramparts also produced earlier Iron Age dates, and there was extensive evidence of iron and copper alloy metalworking. The broad span of the radiocarbon dates obtained, and the Late Bronze Age chisel from deposits beneath the burnt rampart may indicate the defensive sequence is more complex than is currently understood (see Greig 1970; 1971; 1972), but there is no reason why it should represent continuous occupation of the promontory over such a long period.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 25 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2982

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