Note
Date 19 August 2014 - 10 August 2016
Event ID 1044800
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044800
This small promontory work, situated high up on a bluff overlooking the Mouse Water, includes features that almost certainly indicate that it is the remains of a medieval castle. Triangular on plan, the interior measures 30m from N to S by a maximum of 28m transversely (0.04ha) immediately to the rear of the substantial rampart, which has been drawn in an arc across the neck of the promontory to defend the northern and eastern approaches. The rampart is fronted by a broad ditch, and on the E there are the remains of a second, though this is lost at the edge of the arable field to the N and cannot be traced any further round to the W. On the N, the plan drawn up by RCAHMS investigators in 1973 depicts a track obliquely crossing the outer lip of the inner ditch, but this is a misunderstanding of the subtlety of the earthworks, in which the line of the outer lip of the ditch to either side appears to extend behind a break of slope lower down the counterscarp; rather than a mutilation by later trackway, these are probably the decayed remains of the abutment of a bridge spanning the ditch, possibly to an entrance over the top of the rampart. Such a feature would be unique in Iron Age fortifications, and though it does not rule out the possibility of an earlier occupation, it suggests that this is a medieval castle akin to a ringwork.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 10 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC1568
