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Note
Date 12 June 2015 - 31 August 2016
Event ID 1044532
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044532
This fort occupies East Lomond Hill, a distinctive conical summit that commands extensive views across Fife. At least three lines of defence can be identified, but it would be unwise to assume that all are part of a contemporary scheme; indeed, there are hints that at least two periods of construction are represented in the outermost line. At its core lies a pear-shaped enclosure, measuring about 60m from NW to SE by a maximum of 31m transversely towards its NW end within a rampart reduced to a mound of rubble; the only feature visible within its interior is a grass-grown cairn some 13m in diameter by 1m in height. This inner enclosure is also enclosed by a second rampart, now little more than a stony scarp enclosing about 0.34ha, while yet another rampart encircles the NW and NE quarters lower down the slope, according to the plan surveyed by RCAHMS investigators in 1925, obliquely mounting the slope on the E to meet the second rampart and also linked by a rampart dropping down the slope on the N; the sequence of construction at the junction on the E is uncertain, as indeed is its course on the southern flank of the summit, where the plan shows a series of terraces dropping down the slope above a massive rampart with an external ditch set at the foot of the slope. A notable feature of this outer defence is a dogleg on the SW, where it turns sharply down the slope towards the foot of the outcrops that protect the W side; oblique aerial photographs, however, reveal a faint scar traversing the slope from this dogleg, apparently heading for the lower rampart on the NE side, and possibly indicating an earlier line of enclosure on a far larger scale, perhaps taking in as much as 1.6ha, though in 1925 RCAHMS also noted several other terraces lower down the NE flank, two of which were not shown on the plan but can be seen on satellite imagery another 55m down the slope on the NE. A broad gap in this outer defence on the SE, on the line of a trackway that can be climbing the slope below, is possibly an entrance. Two hollow glass beads, a mould for small ingots and a slab bearing the incised outline of a bull have been found in the fort; in the course of the survey in 1925 RCAHMS investigators noted bloomery waste on a terrace on the SW.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 31 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3120
