Note
Date 1 July 2014 - 18 October 2016
Event ID 1045626
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045626
This fort is situated on Camp Hill and comprises a complex sequence of univallate fortifications occupying the hillock forming the summit, and a much larger outer enclosure contouring around a shoulder at a lower level. The earliest of the ramparts probably enclosed an area measuring about 78m from NNE to SSW by 50m transversely (0.34ha), though its course is largely masked around the SE half of the circuit by the latest, phase 3, line, which includes an entrance on the ESE. This rampart takes in a rather smaller area of about 0.26ha, but on the W overrides yet another line of vallation (phase 2). Now fragmentary, particularly where it is overlain by house platforms within the interior, this last encloses no more than 0.1ha on the summit, but was apparently accompanied by an external ditch, which can be seen cut into the rear of the surviving sector of the phase 1 rampart at the foot of the summit hillock on the W. Within the interior the stances of no fewer than 35 round-houses can be seen, mainly comprising platforms but including several with ring-grooves. None can be assigned to a specific phase, but their construction has virtually obliterated the line of the phase 2 rampart within the interior, while several others have been cut back into the phase 3 rampart. Whether this implies a phase of post-defensive open settlement, or possibly that the larger outer enclosure was itself a free-standing line of defence, is not known. The outer enclosure, which had been virtually ploughed out on the NE and SE by the middle of the 19th century, takes in an area measuring 143m from NNE to SSW by 114m transversely (1.3ha) within twin banks with a medial ditch about 5m in breadth; The position of its entrance is unknown, a break on the SSW being relatively modern.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC1094
