Note
Date 17 August 2015 - 31 May 2016
Event ID 1045104
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045104
An inusual configuration of earthworks on the N spur of Bonchester Hill, overlooked by the better known fort occupying the summit, includes elements of defence which suggest that it should be considered in part as an element within the overall sequence of fortified settlement on the hill. At its core lies a fortified settlement situated on the crest of the spur, but this has evidently been adapted and modified in a series of stages, which includes the addition of a large rectilinear enclosure on the slope to the NW and the incorporation of both into the line of a linear earthwork that crosses the spur from E to W, the latter almost certainly representing one of the last elements to be constructed. The fortified settlement is oval on plan and measures internally 52m from NNE to SSW by 45m transversely (0.18ha). Its defences are best preserved around the W half of the circuit, where they comprise twin ramparts with a medial ditch about 5m in breadth, but on the S the inner appears to become the outer, forming the counterscarp to the ditch around the rest of the circuit as far as the entrance on the E, and there is no trace of a rampart along the inner lip of the ditch. While in 1949 RCAHMS investigators merely noted the unusual configuration of the ramparts that resulted at the entrance on the NE, it is perhaps more likely that this represents a modification of an original bivallate circuit, in which the inner rampart was extended across the ditch on the S to adopt the outer line on the E; this stratigraphy is partly obscured by the way the ditch of the linear earthwork has also been cut through the outer rampart on the S. At the entrance, like many other bivallate earthworks in Roxburghshire, the ramparts return and unite around the W ditch terminal, and doubtless was originally matched around the E terminal. Apart from a bank traversing from NE to SW, the interior is featureless. On the SW, the ditches of both the linear earthwork and the rectilinear enclosure are punched through the line of the inner rampart, the enclosure probably the remains of a late Iron Age settlement taking in an area of at least 1.2ha, within which there are evidence of both an inner and outer enclosure, a series of scooped courts and yards, and several possible round-houses.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 31 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3293
