Note
Date 11 August 2014 - 16 November 2016
Event ID 1044776
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044776
This fort occupies a hillock that projects from the escarpment forming the southern face of the Campsie Fells. Oval on plan, it measures 44m from E to W by 36m transversely (0.13ha) within a wall reduced to a mound of rubble between 4.5m and 6m thick and up to 1.5m high; occasional outer facing-stones are visible, and excavations in 1954-5 showed that it is 3.6m thick (Fairhurst 1956). Additional protection on the NNE, where the position of the fort offers no topographical advantage, has been provided by a complex belt of ditches and ramparts some 40m deep, which almost certainly represents several periods of construction. Elsewhere on the N the excavators also reported possible remains of an earlier rampart beneath the inner wall, while the terrace immediately to its front, which can be seen round most of its circuit and is accompanied on the S by a few earthfast boulders, is perhaps further evidence of a demolished circuit and a more complex history of construction. The absence of metallic residues from a piece of vitrified stone found in reuse in the interior suggests that it did not come from an industrial process, thus raising the possibility that an earlier phase of the defences had been destroyed by fire. There are entrances on the ESE and W, both of them approached by short lengths of hollowed trackways. Excavations within the interior revealed the presence of stratified deposits, with two successive levels of cobbling and paving, and, overlying the lower, evidence of the stone footing of at least one round-house (Fairhurst 1956). Finds from the excavations included: pottery; a fragment of iron; a stone ball; a stone disc; fragments of a shale armlet; a stone ring; and several stone lamps.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 16 November 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC1466
