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Note

Date 15 December 2015 - 18 May 2016

Event ID 1045178

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045178

The well-known fort known as The Chesters at Drem is situated on a relatively low-lying ridge of rock, which is entirely overlooked by higher ground no more than 100m to the S. The defences are evidently complex, but no clear sequence can be established by survey alone, other than that the innermost rampart, which encloses an oval area on the summit of the ridge measuring about 110m from E to W by 50m transversely (0.47ha), is overlain by a settlement of stone-founded hut-circles and small yards that sprawl across the interior. Whether this rampart, however, was ever used in conjunction with the second rampart, which forms a concentric enclosure of some 0.96ha around it, is quite unknown. Up to four ramparts and ditches can be seen beyond this second line, forming a belt of defences in excess of 40m deep, but they do not form consistently concentric circuits, appearing and disappearing around the ends and northern flank, and entirely missing in the bottom of the gully on the S; almost certainly they represent several periods of construction, and some of the short segments at the E end are either hornworks to provide additional protection to the entrance here, or fragments of an earlier enclosure overlain by the second rampart. This has certainly been a major entrance, the route from the outermost rampart to the innermost covering a distance of some 70m between the terminals of up to six separate lines of defence. A second entrance at the W end is more elaborate still, the present track mounting the slope obliquely from the W before turning sharply back on itself through a gap in the second rampart with overlapping terminals, thus exposing the visitor's left side. A third gap on the S appears more recent, though it may have served the later settlement in the interior.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3872

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