Note
Date 2 November 2015 - 31 August 2016
Event ID 1044934
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044934
The small fort on the rocky summit of Dalmahoy Hill lies at the core of a series of outer enclosures, the walls of which follow natural terraces between outcrops and block off access up and down the gullies on the SE and SW flanks of the hill. The fort crowning the summit is oval on plan and measures about 43m from N to S by 25m transversely (0.08ha) within a heavily robbed robbed wall some 3.6m in thickness. Where runs of outer face survive on the E and S, this wall has measured at least 3m in height and there is an entrance on the NE, opening externally onto a terrace with traces of walling around its lip and an outer entrance. While the RCAHMS investigators who first drew up a plan of the fort in 1926, recognised this outer entrance and traces of walling between the outcrops around the W flank, it was not until 1948 that the full extent of the outer enclosures taking in the whole hilltop was recognised, including a major enclosure extending for about 200m along the ridge to the ENE, and a series of lesser walls combining with the outcrops to enclose the terraces stepping down from the fort on the W. The overall area enclosed measured some 360m in length from ENE to WSW and extends to about 2ha. The plan was traced out by Robert Stevenson and led him to identify the summit fortification as a citadel within an arrangement of contemporary outer enclosures, thus giving rise to the concept of a 'nuclear fort', a type that has become synonymous with early medieval fortifications. While the wall extending along the SE flank of the ridge-top is between 2.4m and 3m thick, the walls on the W appear of slighter construction, and Stevenson himself conceded that some of the lesser banks forming enclosures at the foot of the SW flank were possibly agricultural, but Feachem (1955, 78-9, fig 6; 1963, 137-8) at first accepted the broad outline of the hypothesis, albeit that he he subsequently considered the visible remains of the small summit fort to be a later insertion into what was probably an earlier Iron Age fort. This latter hypothesis seems inherently more likely today, but the full extent of this earlier fort is much less certain. It presumably took in the summit of the hill and the ridge to the ENE, and had one entrance in its SSE side opening into the gully on the E side of the summit, with perhaps a second at the N end of the gully, though the course of the perimeter on the NW side of the ridge is far from clear. Another entrance route seems to have mounted the W flank of the hill via a second gully, passing through at least two of the enclosure walls on this side, but without any obvious route to the entrance of the summit fort. Unlike the Dunion (Atlas No.3368), the obvious parallel for a large prehistoric fort formed of multiple enclosures, there are no traces of round-houses within any of the enclosures and the structure noted on the summit of the ridge by Stevenson is perhaps more likely to be the remains of a robbed cairn.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 31 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3698
