Note
Date 20 December 2013 - 23 May 2016
Event ID 1045430
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045430
This small fort is situated on the summit of Barhullion Fell and measures about 39m from NNE to SSW by 24m transversely within two roughly concentric walls set up to 7m apart. Both walls have been heavily robbed, the inner comprising a low grass-grown mound of rubble some 5m thick pitted with small quarry pits, though on the W, where the natural topography of the summit is much steeper, a broad scree of bare stones spreads down the slope and probably hides the line of the outer wall. This latter is about 2.4m in thickness and has runs of outer facing-stones exposed on the NE and SW. The inner wall seems to have been constructed on a more massive scale and sunk into its core on the SW there is a stone structure with reveted walls measuring 1.4m square internally and up to 1.1m in depth. Later structures are often found utilising the ready supply of stone provided by a fort wall and there is no particular reason to this structure is contemporary with the wall, or indeed of antiquity, although RCAHMS investigators in 1955 thought there might have been a gallery within the thickness of the wall extending back round towards the entrance. In view of the evident disturbance by stone robbers any interpretation of irregularities in the surface of the rubble here is probably misleading. Nevertheless, the invesigators also recorded upwards of 40 stones belonging to a chevaux de frise, mainly on the NE, but with several on the S also, suggesting that these may have formed a belt around the eastern half of the defences. Some of the latter stones are almost certainly bedrock, and opinions vary as to the overall number of stones that survive, but there can be no doubt of the existence of the chevaux de frise extending up to 15m outside the outer rampart on the N; several stones are still upright, the tallest of which is about 0.75m high.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 23 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC0218
