Note

Date 3 November 2015 - 3 April 2017

Event ID 1044935

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044935

Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland

The greater part of the fort that stood on Kaimes Hill has been quarried away and now only a minor fragment of the ENE end survives beyond the disused N face of the quarry. Its defences were evidently complex, representing multiple phases, and it would be naive to believe that the true sequence of their construction and dates are understood from the rescue excavations conducted in 1940 at the WSW end under the supervision of Gordon Childe (1941), and more recently at the SSE side and at the ENE end from 1964 to 1972 by Derek Simpson (1969). Nevertheless, the circuits break down into two main elements, namely an inner and an outer enclosure, the former enclosing a roughly oval area measuring about 165m from E to W by 65m transversely (0.85ha), and the latter a less regular 260m from ENE to WSW by 120m transversely (2.3ha). Both Childe and Simpson found that the circuit of the inner enclosure had been adopted on at least two occasions, and that an earlier rampart had been partly demolished and replaced on a slightly different line. Childe also found another rampart buried on the slope below, with midden deposits built up against its rear and rubble from the later reconstruction apparently collapsed across it; on these grounds he assigned it to the earlier phase, though its course is concentric to the reconstructed circuit rather than the earlier line. Simpson likewise showed that the perimeter of the inner enclosure incorporated the remains of two ramparts, the core of the earlier of which contained burnt earth, some vitrified stones, and domestic debris and covered traces of burnt timbers at its base. The rampart that replaced it was itself of two periods of construction, the first a drystone wall, which was subsequently encased in a thicker deposit of earth and rubble with a massive outer face. At the entrance midway along the SSE side, the facing of the terminal of the earliest rampart had been carried into the interior, and in the later reconstructions this seems to have formed the rear face of a built inturn. Like Childe, he also identified a series of additional ramparts on the slope outside the inner circuit, mainly outside the entrance at the E end and largely hidden beneath the later occupation represented by numerous later stone-founded round-houses that existed around the S margin of the inner enclosure and sprawled across the defences down across the interior of the outer enclosure at the at the ENE end. The continuity of the circuit of the outer enclosure is represented by what is generally its outermost rampart, and it is not fully understood how this related to the two ramparts placed concentrically within it at the ENE end, or indeed to yet another rampart which detaches itself on the E to swing on a wider arc round the ENE end down to the cliff-edge on the N. Simpson made sense of this by assuming that the outermost rampart dug by Childe at the W end was the innermost of these ramparts at the ENE end (Simpson's rampart 5), but Childe believed he had excavated the outermost rampart shown on the various plans by Fred Coles (1896, 270, fig 1) and the RCAHMS investigators (1929, 160-2, no.216, fig 199) and identified by Simpson elsewhere as his rampart 7. The sequence of enclosure is evidently more complex than has been revealed by survey and excavation. Nevertheless, the outermost rampart was clearly an important circuit at some stage in the fort's history, pierced by entrances on the ENE, E and S, though not in the apparent gap tested by Simpson below the S entrance of the inner enclosure; the enhanced belt of defences at the ENE end flanks both the ENE and E entrances, and from the latter the route to the summit evidently passed through the complex of ramparts outside the E entrance of the inner enclosure. The outer enclosure was also accompanied by a chevaux de frise, which was identified on the RCAHMS plan at two points along the SSE side; in the area uncovered by Simpson, however, it was not a continuous belt. The main evidence of occupation within the fort is represented by stone-founded round-houses, two of which were excavated by Childe and others by Simpson. Some clearly overlie ramparts, as was first demonstrated by Childe, but in view of the uncertainties about the complete structural history of the defences, it would be unwise to assume that this represents a phase of essentially unenclosed or undefended settlement.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 03 April 2017. Atlas of Hillforts SC3699