Note
Date 22 August 2014 - 16 August 2016
Event ID 1044813
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044813
This fort is situated on the summit of Bodsberry Hill, which rises steeply from the E bank of the River Clyde to the SE of Elvanfoot. Tailored to the topography, it forms an irregular plan, measuring up to 105m from NW to SE by 76m transversely (0.65ha) within a stone rampart largely reduced to a scarp in which occasional outer facing-stones are visible. Additional protection is provided by an outer rampart, which though only visible on the NW and SE, peters out onto natural breaks of slope that extend around the rest of the circuit; on the N, where the rampart forms a bank 3.4m in thickness, it is accompanied by an internal quarry ditch, but elsewhere its line is marked by little more than a low scarp. There are four entrances, on the NW, NE, SE and SW respectively, the first still retaining facing-stones on the NE side of the passage. A depression partly encircled by a bank in the W quadrant of the interior was shown by excavation before 1864 to be a well or cistern (Irving and Murray 1864, vol 1, 9), and while no other structures were depicted when surveyed by RCAHMS in 1959, the investigators were aware of possible traces of timber round-houses (Feachem 1963, 134-5), and several have been revealed by subsequent aerial photography taken under snow in 1980.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 16 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC1631
