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Note

Date 17 August 2014 - 23 May 2016

Event ID 1044806

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044806

The remains of a fort revealed by cropmarks on a promontory along the escarpment of an ancient shoreline, was destroyed by gravel extraction in 1961. Excavations immediately prior to its destruction uncovered at least three concentric ditches and the lines up to five palisade trenches, probably representing a series of successive enclosures cutting off the relatively easy southern approaches to the promontory. Estimates of the original size of the interior range widely, from 60m from E to W by 45m transversely by RCAHMS investigators (RCAHMS 1963, 80, no.82) to 82m by 73m respectively by the excavator (Proudfoot 1978, 115), and 75m by 65m scaled from the plan (Proudfoot 1978, 114, fig 2), though the latter shows the internal houses slightly large than the measurements given in the text; nevertheless, the area enclosed behind the inner ditch, which was over 6m in breadth and 4m in depth, was at least 0.3ha in extent, and in at least one phase there was probably an entrance on the SSE. The stratigraphic relationships between the three ditches are unknown, nor indeed with the palisade trench that lay between the inner and middle ditches, and it is possible that any one of these lines may represent the remains of an independent defence enclosing a larger area. At least three other palisade trenches enclosing smaller areas were also located within the interior, and within the inner of these was a large timber round-house 14.6m in diameter, which had been erected on the site of an earlier oval structure measuring about 14m by 11m. While the finds from the floor of the later round-house and two adjacent pits broadly fall in the 1st-2nd centuries AD, it is likely that the multiple lines of ditches and palisades found here represent a much longer chronology of occupation and fortification.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 23 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC1544

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