Note
Date 20 April 2015 - 18 October 2016
Event ID 1045684
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045684
The dominant landmark in the centre of Aberdeenshire, The Mither Tap o' Bennachie, is crowned by a spectacular fortification with massive walls. The summit of the hill is an inhospitable boss of bare rock which was probably once enclosed by a wall, though the only trace of it remaining is a line of outer facing-stones on a ledge above a scree of rubble on the SE, and another scree below the crag on the NE. Below this wall on the S and E there has been a second wall, though again this is largely reduced to a scree dropping almost to the foot of the slope, while encircling the foot of the boss is a massive wall some 8m in thickness, which apparently rose internally in at least two built steps from a kerbed plinth that can be detected at its foot to the N of the entrance on the ENE. Where best preserved, the lower and upper steps of the inner face are nine and five course high respectively, presumably culminating in a parapet at least one tier above this level, and long runs of the outer face can also be traced at several places in the rubble. The sheer scale of this wall suggests that it has been at some stage the principal line of defence, swinging round the NE and SE flanks of the boss from its vertical face on the N to the terminal of the spine of outcrop dropping down from the boss on the SSW; on the W the wall likewise extends from the cliff-face to the terminal of this spine, and though it must once have spanned the outcrops to complete the southern sector of the circuit, no trace of any rubble now survives here. This outer defence evidently replaced an earlier wall lying immediately inside its line, on the S forming a terrace faced with large blocks to a height of 1.2m in height and possibly retaining the remains of an earlier entrance on the SSE. The precise course of this earlier circuit is uncertain, for while it may have cut back W across the spine of rocks, there are also traces of an earlier wall behind the S end of the bank of rubble forming the W sector of the enclosure; it too has traces of an entrance immediately opposite the gap in the rubble here. The interior of the citadel-like enclosures taking in the summit of the boss are unmeasurable, though the inner cannot have exceeded (0.06ha). In its second phase the outer wall enclosed an oval area measuring about 120m from NNE to SSW by 70m transversely (0.67ha), though relatively little of it could have been occupied. Two later pens are visible immediately behind the lower of the two walls on the boss, but Christian Maclagan's account drawn up in the late 19th century is probably not a particularly reliable guide to the former presence of other structures in the interior. The fort with its viewpoint on the summit has been a major attraction for walkers and tourists, which has led to significant later disturbance, including the construction of wall-faces to revet the tumbled rubble to either side of the track approaching the entrance on the ENE before 1867; the date of a wall extending round an outcrop on the N side of this track is unknown. Remedial works along the pathway within the entrance recovered stratified charcoal samples that have been date to the early medieval period, though their precise context remains obscure (Atkinson 2006).
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2961
