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Date 4 December 2014 - 1 June 2016

Event ID 1044457

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044457

This fort is situated on a summit forming part of the ridge on the W flank of Glen Nevis opposite Ben Nevis. A spectacular position, the core of the fort itself is pear-shaped, with its long axis lying ENE and WSW above a hillside that falls away on the E all the way down to the floor of the glen. The rough interior slopes towards the WSW, measuring about 46m in length and contracting from 27m in breadth on the WSW to 11m on the ENE (0.1ha) within a heavily vitrified wall spread between 4.5m and 8m in thickness and up to 2.5m in height. The narrow gap on the W used by the modern path to the summit is probably the entrance. In addition to the vitrified wall enclosing the summit, there are traces of an outer wall set much further down the slope, swinging round the N, E and W flanks of the low rise some 110m to the NNW and petering out in boggy ground at the foot of the slope below the N flank of the summit, only to re-appear around its S and SE flank. Probably enclosing an area of at least 1.7ha, the character of this outer enclosure and its relationship to the fort on the summit are uncertain, but it is likely to have been a free-standing enclosure in its own right. Within its interior, at the foot of the slope dropping down from the summit on the N, there is a circular depression some 4m in diameter by 0.5m deep which is possibly the mouth of a well or cistern. A programme of excavation was initiated in 2015 by AOC Archaeology on behalf of the Forestry Commission, in the first season sectioning the core defences and confirming the presence of the outer enclosure on the N.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 01 June 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2607

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