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Note
Date 1 September 2015 - 4 August 2016
Event ID 1045211
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045211
This unusual fort is situated on a ridge that lies in a bend of the Ale Water opposite Ancrum. The fort occupies the SW tip of the summit, where the ground falls away steeply down to the river on the SW and SE, and on the NW into a shallow gully, and comprises an oval inner enclosure accompanied by two courts formed between widely-spaced outer walls on the gentle approach from the NE. The inner enclosure measures about 63m from NE to SW by 50m transversely (0.25ha) within a wall from 2.2m to 3m in thickness, with massive facing-stones visible both inside and out. An outer wall apparently springs from the inner on the SW and encircles the weaker W and NW flanks, returning to the NW side of the inner of two enclosed courts on the NE. The courts are both trapezoidal, and enclosed by similarly constructed walls, the plan suggesting that they have been successively added to the fort, though the junctions of the wall are buried in rubble. The inner measures internally a maximum of 50m from NW to SE by 21m transversely (0.09ha), and the outer 62m by 25m respectively (0.15ha). There are two entrances, one on the E, approached through the two courts, each of which has a gap in the wall adjacent to its E corner, and the second piercing both walls on the W, though in 1949 RCAHMS investigators speculated that the latter may have been to facilitate the cultivation at a relatively recent date of the otherwise featureless interior.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 04 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3382
