Field Visit

Date 26 June 1953

Event ID 1111104

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1111104

RCAHMS Inventory: Stirlingshire

NS67NW 639 789

Fort, Meikle Reive.

This fort is situated on the S. face of the Campsie Fells, 1100 yds. NE. of Bencloich farmhouse, and at a height of a little over 700 ft. O.D. It occupies a knoll which protrudes from the face of the hillside and may thus be overlooked from the N. The fort is roughly oval on plan (Fig. 17), measuring 145 ft. from E. to W. by 120 ft. transversely within the ruins of a stone wall which are spread to a width of between 15ft. and 20 ft. Excavation (1) has shown that this wall originally measured 12 ft. in thickness. Outside the wall there is a terrace about 14 ft. in width, from the outer margin of which a few earthfast boulders protrude. Immediately to N. and NW. easy access is offered to the fort from the hillside by a broad neck of land, and this is barred by a series of ramparts and ditches which extend in depth for more than 100 ft. The fort has two entrances; the larger one, which was probably the main entrance, lies on the E. and the smaller one on the W. The interior is grass-grown and featureless. About 100 ft. E. of the E. entrance there is a circular depression, 30 ft. in diameter, which is often full of water; it may have been a pond used by the occupants of the fort. A modern cairn stands on the NE.arc of the wall.

As seen on the surface the structure appears to be an Early Iron Age fort of conventional type, and the small finds from the excavation seem to confirm this; they included a number of pieces of hand-made pottery, a stone ball, a sandstone disc, and fragments of a shale armlet and a stone ring. The excavators reported traces of part of what might have been an earlier rampart close to the inner face of the N. arc of the main wall, but as the latter was not sectioned the certain existence and true nature of the supposed earlier remains were not proved; they were thought, however, to consist of post-holes belonging to the inner revetment of a core of earth and brushwood. No positive evidence of a post-Roman occupation was found, although, as only about one fourteenth of the interior of the fort was examined, this negative evidence cannot be regarded as conclusive.

RCAHMS 1963, visited 26 June 1953.

(1) TGAS, new series, xiv (1956), 64 ff.