Note
Date 16 June 2015 - 18 August 2016
Event ID 1044540
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044540
Situated to the SW of Dunshalt, in a low-lying area on the S bank of the River Eden, the topographical position of this extraordinary multivallate enclosure holds little defensive merit, other than its ditches may originally have been wet, but it is one of a series of enclosures on the edges of low terraces in the Howe of Fife displaying evidence of multiple ditches. While these others are all cropmarks revealed by aerial photography, this is a chance survivor, shielded from the main impact of improved agriculture by its incorporation into a plantation, though the NW sector of the outer ramparts and ditches was destroyed by 1854 in the workings of a clay pit for the adjacent tileworks (OS 6-inch map Fife 1856, sheet 16). Roughly circular on plan, it measures about 36m in diameter (0.1ha) within three tightly concentric banks with intermediate ditches, which are encircled by a further flat-bottomed ditch some 9m in breadth and flanked externally by a counterscarp bank; the banks stand about 1.2m above the bottoms of the ditches and together they form a belt some 35m deep. A well-defined entrance causeway penetrates the defences on the SE. The only feature visible within the interior is a circular enclosure measuring about 14m in diameter within a low bank.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3127
