Note
Date 21 October 2015 - 24 May 2016
Event ID 1044963
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044963
This fort stands on the summit of a rounded hill between Portmore House and Portmore Loch, and having been under trees since the early 19th century is remarkably well preserved, presenting an impressive array of low ramparts and ditches. The defences almost certainly represent at least two periods of construction, but whereas RCAHMS investigators in 1959 opted to see the innermost enclosure as the earlier, subsequently enhanced by the addition of no fewer than three ramparts and intermediate ditches, the reverse is far more likely to be the case; the relationship hinges on the stratigraphy on the W, but this relationship is not clear-cut in the way that it appears upon their plan (RCAHMS 1967, 136-7, no.309, fig 124). The innermost enclosure is oval on plan, measuring 73m from NNW to SSE by 64m transversely (0.35ha) within a rampart that rises no more than 0.5m above the interior and 1.5m above the external ditch; the ditch is some 3m in breadth and accompanied around the NW half of the circuit by a low counterscarp bank, and it is this that is supposedly overlain on the W by the inner rampart of the outer defences. Elsewhere the the space between them forms a strip up to 8m wide, which is a curious feature if the intention had been to add a deep belt of multivallate defences. More likely these latter, which are altogether more substantial than the inner enclosure, are the earlier, forming a belt up to 20m deep and enclosing an area measuring about 100m by 85m transversely (0.6ha). The defences are pierced by entrances at three places, on the NE, S and SW respectively, and at each the gap between the terminal of the ramparts and ditches narrows towards the interior. Each of the entrances has also served the inner enclosure, though this inner entrance is offset to one side of the gap in the outer ramparts, on the NE and SW only slightly, but on the S in gross degree, creating a deep dogleg in the approach. The defences and interior are usually clothed in deep heather, but when the OS revised the 1:2500 depiction in 1971 the vegetation had been burnt off, revealing seven shallow depressions between 6m and 9m in diameter within the inner enclosure, which may mark the stances of timber round-houses.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 24 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3661
