Field Visit
Date 9 October 1908
Event ID 1088196
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1088196
21. Fort, Prestoncleuch.
This fort (fig. 7 [DP 225487]) is situated at the east end of Preston plantation, 1 ¼ miles north of Preston village, 700 feet above the sea. A strongly fortified enclosure, bounded on the north and east by a slight rampart on the edge of a scarp which descends to a level terrace cut on the bank 6 or 8 feet below, and on the west-north-west and south by three parallel ramparts with two intervening trenches. The interior is sub-oval in form, measuring from east to west? 260 feet, and from north to south? 220 feet within defences measuring at the west side, from crest to crest of rampart, 106 feet. The bottom of the inner ditch is 10 feet below the crest of the inner rampart and 12 feet below that of the middle rampart, while the outer ditch is 12 feet below the middle and 9 feet below the outer rampart, which latter is about 5 feet high to the outside; the middle rampart is thus of slightly higher elevation than that around the interior. There appear to have been two entrances, one towards the north end of the terrace on the east, and the other at the west side of the fort. To the south of this entrance the top of the inner rampart is grooved for some distance, and the middle rampart has a platform in its rear. In the interior area are some depressions suggestive of hut circles. The interior is largely covered with a deep growth of heather.
RCAHMS 1915, visited 9 October 1908.
See Antiquities, xxix. p. 167 (plan and secs.); Ber. Nat. Club, 1894-95, p. 367 (plan and secs.); Christison, p. 354.
OS Map: Ber., x. SE.
