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Note
Date 1 December 2014 - 24 August 2016
Event ID 1044439
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044439
The oval dun standing on a rocky knoll on the E side of a large headland also lies within two outer works that cut off the approach from the landward side; both are usually interpreted as outworks to the dun, but while neither appears to make sense topographically as a free-standing fortification, the differing states of preservation hint that they do not present a unified scheme of defences with the dun. As such, it is possible that they were designed to enclose a much bigger area on the headland, the full extent of which is now lost. The dun itself is oval on plan, measuring about 20m from NNE to SSW by 11m transversely (0.02ha) within a robbed wall about 3m in thickness; several runs of outer face are visible and the entrance is on the SSW. The first of the outer ramparts is set at the foot of the knoll and extends W from outcrops at the edge of the shore until it disappears beneath a modern dyke below the SW flank of the dun. While this wall is reduced to little more than an irregular scatter of rubble with a few outer facing-stones, the outermost wall beyond it is exceptionally well-preserved, with long stretches of both inner and outer face still in place. It measures 3m in thickness and links an area of broken ground on the E to the edge of an area of bog on the W. There is an entrance midway along, immediately W of which a rectangular enclosure appears to have been butted against it. RCAHMS investigators observed that the different states of preservation of the two outer works suggested that they were of different dates, an argument that can also be extended to the dun wall, but it is difficult to establish the true function of either. Notably a modern dyke cuts off the headland on much the same line, and it it possible that the two outer walls are successive versions of the same enclosure, though the line of neither can be detected to the W of the area of bog. Such an enclosure would have cut off an area of 0.6ha.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 24 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2585
