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Note

Date 27 October 2014 - 18 October 2016

Event ID 1044692

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044692

This complex fortification has a long history of occupation, the latter stages of which have been shown by excavation to span the medieval and post-medieval periods (WoSAS Event ID: 4947; Kilmartin House Data Structure Report). At its core, however, there is an oval dun which shows evidence of reconstruction and is overlain by two rectangular buildings, surrounded by a series of more extensive defensive enclosures. In its latest form the dun measures about 15.5m by 12m within a well-preserved wall about 2.8m in thickness, and there is an entrance protected by an outer hornwork on the SSW. The wall of the rectilinear outer enclosure may have sprung from the dun on the E and can be traced around the lip of the steep and precipitous flanks of the hillock, probably returning to the the foot of the outcrops below the dun wall on the S and enclosing an area measuring about 48m from NE to SW by a maximum of 28m transversely (0.12ha) at the NE end, where there is also a well-preserved entrance; the wall varies between 1.5m and 3m in thickness, with well-preserved runs of outer face, and the entrance is 1.75m wide and the length of the passage has been increased to 2.7m by the addition of two external buttresses. An additional wall springing from the W angle of this enclosure takes in a lower terrace at the SW, while other fragments of walls may be seen on the S, NW and NE. While the outer enclosure has been thought to be an addition to the dun, the superficial resemblance to a nuclear fort has lead to its inclusion here

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2448

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