Note
Date 19 January 2016 - 21 October 2016
Event ID 1045156
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045156
This impressive forts crowns the southern tip of the spur above Longcroft and displays evidence of a complex sequence of construction and occupation. Oval on plan, at first sight the defences comprise no fewer than four ramparts with intermediate ditches, the innermost, which is heavily robbed and obscured by an overlying cluster of courts and yards, enclosing an area measuring 80m from NE to SW by 60m transversely (0.38ha). This enclosure, however, lies eccentrically within the second rampart, which itself overlies the third circuit around the SE and S sectors. Thus, while the first and second ramparts may be contemporary, it appears more likely that they are successive, and that the interior has contracted progressively from an initial defence of a rampart and ditch with intermittent traces of a counterscarp bank, which enclosed an area measuring 115m from NE to SW by 95m transversely (0.86ha); the second rampart, erected with an external ditch immediately within this line on the N and W, reduced the interior to 0.69ha, and the innermost to 0.38ha. There are entrances on the E and the SW, the former probably piercing all four circuits obliquely in such a way as to expose the visitor's right side. The character of the SW entrance is less clear, and access in the later stages would have been impeded by one of the overlying courts, but immediately to its E there is evidence of a shallow hollowed trackway mounting the slope, only to be overlain and blocked by the counterscarp rampart of the earliest identifiable circuit; while this track is thus of some antiquity, possibly indicating a yet earlier enclosure here, it does not necessarily follow that the rest of the deeply worn trackway descending the tip of the spur is quite so ancient, and the majority of the wear that has cut it so deeply into the slope may have been caused by more recent traffic accessing furlongs of medieval or post-medieval rig and outlying hill pastures. The stances of several stone-founded round-houses can be seen amongst the courts and yards sprawled across the interior.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 21 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC4008
