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Date 30 December 2015 - 20 October 2016

Event ID 1045238

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045238

This fort, which occupies the tip of a spur projecting from the foot of the NE flank of Priestlaw Hill, overlooks the S bank of the Whiteadder Water where it debouches from the dam of the Whiteadder Reservoir. Pear-shaped on plan, its defences comprise a belt of up to four ramparts with external ditches cutting across the neck of the spur on the W, but reducing to three ramparts on the N flank above the Whiteadder, and two on the E above the gully of the Kilmade Burn. Close examination, however, shows that this configuration of the defences is the later of two schemes, which has been superimposed eccentrically across an earlier scheme on the N and W. The present circuit of the innermost rampart encloses an area measuring 125m from N to S by a maximum of 87m transversely towards the N end (0.78ha), and belongs largely to the later scheme, though it almost certainly subsumes the line of the earlier inner rampart on the W; indeed the only visible evidence of the latter is on the N side of the entrance on the NW, where the construction of the new inner rampart inside its line to elaborate the entrance passage has allowed a short fragment to survive. In this earlier phase the defences probably included the second rampart on the W, but this and the fragment of inner rampart are truncated where the third rampart on the W swings round onto the N flank, probably to adopt the original line of the inner rampart on the lip of the slope dropping down to the Whiteadder. It is unclear whether the earlier defences continued along the edge of the gully above the Kilmade Burn on the E flank or whether it was essentially a promontory enclosure in this phase, but the interior was certainly larger and may have extended to as much as 0.94ha. The outermost rampart on the W should probably be attributed to the later scheme, which was essentially trivallate, only reducing to two ramparts on the E, and was served by entrances on the NE, SW and NW, though opinion in the various accounts conflicts as to whether there is a gap through the innermost rampart on the SW. The NE and NW entrances show some elaboration: at the the former the gaps are staggered to create an oblique approach that exposes the visitor's right side, while at the latter the terminals of the inner rampart overlap, creating a sharp right turn at the inner end of the entrance way, in this case exposing the visitor's left side. The plan drawn up by RCAHMS investigators in 1920 (RCAHMS 1924, 136, no.218, fig 178) shows twenty-four possible structures within the interior, but these were largely dismissed by their successors visiting in 1954, who could find only two stone-founded round-houses.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 20 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3903

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