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Note
Date 28 April 2015 - 31 May 2016
Event ID 1044353
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044353
Dundarg Castle occupies a narrow promontory running out from the coastal escarpment for a distance of about 80m across the wave cut rock platform that forms the foreshore. At the landward end there is also an earthwork defence comprising a broad flat-bottomed inner ditch with a V-shaped outer ditch forming a rectilinear forework with a frontage of some 80m facing SSW and extending well beyond the margins of the promontory. To their rear, however, at the very root of the promontory, there are also traces of another ditch, which on excavation proved to be some 4m in breadth by 2m in depth and was accompanied by an internal rampart (Fojut and Love 1983). Though undated, this possibly forms part of an earlier defence cutting off a narrow finger of ground measuring about 100m in length and no more than 15m in breadth (0.12ha). The proximity of the parish church of Aberdour to the castle, lying little more than 1km to the WSW, has also led to the correlation of the site of the castle with a reference in the Book of Deer to a Cathair or fortified place hereabouts. The case for an earlier fortification here has also been sustained by the discovery of an enamelled button during earlier excavations at the castle (see discussion in Fojut and Love 1983), and to a lesser extent with a wooden ard-point probably of Iron Age date recovered from one of the ditches (Rees 1983). The case is my no means conclusive, and as far as the documentary reference is concerned it is worth noting that General William Roy's Military map of Scotland (1747-55) annotates a rectangular enclosure on the cliffs roughly midway between the castle and the church 'Danish Entrenchments', suggesting there were other traditions of ancient enclosures in the neighbourhood.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 31 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2983
