Note

Date 16 September 2015 - 20 October 2016

Event ID 1045308

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045308

Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland

This fort is situated on the summit knoll of Park Law, which forms the end of a spur extending WNW from the higher mass of Bonnie Laws. The fort comprise two main elements, namely a roughly oval enclosure on the summit itself, and an outer annexe on a shelf below the E end of the fort, though the relationship between them is uncertain. While the overall configuration of the defences suggest the annexe is an addition to a bivallate fort, there is no evidence the outer rampart continued round the E end of the fort within the annexe. Nevertheless, the inner enclosure on the rocky summit measures about 90m from E to W by 49m transversely (0.31ha) within a rampart some 3.1m in thickness, though it is largely reduced to a stony scarp with occasional outer facing-stones visible; the entrance is at the E end immediately S of the outcrops forming the E tip of the summit area. The slighter outer rampart, flanked by irregular quarry ditches both internally and externally extends round the foot of the knoll on the N, W and S, diverging on the SE to enclose the annexe and return to the foot of the summit knoll on the NE. In 1948 RCAHMS investigators opted for a fairly simple depiction, showing the annexe perimeter as a wall reduced variously to a scarp or bank with occasional facing-stones, and placing an entrance on the SE, where an outer wall loops out around the E side of the annexe and in their opinion butted onto the annexe wall; at various points an external ditch flanks the annexe wall and the addition on the E. In 1986 Roger Mercer drew a new plan showing other scarps and suggested that there was a more complex sequence of enclosures here; in particular he appears to reverse the sequence observed between the annexe wall and the addition on the E, and suggests that the annexe perimeter depicted by the RCAHMS investigators was a secondary reconstruction within the interior of an earlier annexe, and in this secondary phase it was carried round the rest of the fort; while aerial photographs suggest there may be some merit in his interpretation of two successive annexe perimeters, their relationship to the fort defences is no clearer, particularly as the link is apparently broken by a gap at the seam between the annexe and the outer rampart below the entrance at the E end of the fort, which was omitted from the RCAHMS plan but identified as an entrance by Mercer. Within the interior the eastern end is occupied by a late Iron Age settlement of stone-founded round-houses and walled yards, and it is uncertain whether any of the other scoops and stances identified by Mercer are associated with the underlying fort, but within the annexe, which is also overlain by a later farmstead, at least one large ring-ditch house can be seen and there are traces of at least two other large circular structures and possibly several smaller ones too.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 20 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3455