Note
Date 9 July 2014 - 4 August 2016
Event ID 1044726
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044726
The fortification on Dun Scalpsie, a steep-sided hillock on the old shoreline on the NW side of Scalpsie Bay, comprises two elements: an inner enclosure on the summit; and an outer enclosure contouring round the hillock at a lower level. The enclosure on the summit is a roughly oval dun and measures about 24m from NE to SW by 18m transversely within a ruinous wall up to 4.3m in thickness where the faces are preserved on the S, but rather thinner in the entrance passage on the NW. The latter is relatively well-preserved, its sides still standing 1.2m high in the 1890s (Hewison 1893, 282), though only about 0.7m high in 1943. The outer enclosure is probably the remains of a fort, forming an irregular oval on plan, and tapering to a point where the wall runs up against an outcrop on the SSW. It measures about 70m from NNE to SSW by 35m transversely (0.18ha) within a wall reduced to little more than a terrace. Occasional stones of the inner and outer faces are visible, indicating an overall wall thickness on the E of about 3.5m, though the band of rubble elsewhere is much narrower, while on the W it merges with that of the dun on the summit; the entrance is also in this sector, coinciding with entrance into the dun and creating a faced passage 2m wide and 5m in overall length. The interior largely comprises the steep NE and SE flank of the hillock, but at the NNE end there are traces of a probable house platform about 8m in diameter. A small excavation carried out in 1959 (MacCallum 1959; 1963) on the S side of the interior of the dun revealed the inner face of the wall, built of large stones and pinnings and standing about 0.9m high, and possibly with evidence of a rougher later wall overlying it. A layer of clay butted against the basal course of the main wall, above which there were successive layers containing: domestic debris; sand of gravel; and tumbled stones from the wall mixed with more domestic debris. The finds from the layer above the clay included a fragment of bone comb, two whetstones, a spindle whorl and a fragment of slag.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 04 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC1153
