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2013 RCAHMS Special Survey

Event ID 1112484

Category Project

Type Project

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1112484

In June, during Perthshire Archaeology Month, a survey was undertaken of Castle Law fort, Abernethy [NO11NE 12] to share skills in practical survey techniques for RCAHMS staff and members of the local community, but also to enhance the existing record of the fort. The fort, which was ‘excavated’ in the late 1890s, is generally as depicted in the published report but resurvey has demonstrated certain inconsistencies in the original recording of the site. One of these has shown that whilst the internal length of the fort (42m) is as previously recorded, the breadth is 18m rather than 15m, something that significantly increases the usable area within the timber-laced wall.

A survey of the fort on Denoon Law, Glamis [NO34SE 1], was carried out in the summer in order to provide a modern plan to accompany a revised evaluation and description of the site. Once proposed as a vitrified fort, the earthworks are, in fact, almost entirely made up of soil derived from internal quarries, strongly suggesting that the walls were probably of box rampart construction with some drystone facing. Two main periods of construction have been identified in the principal rampart, which stands over 2m high in places but has been robbed to ground-level at the south corner. Other than the quarries, there are no contemporary features visible within the interior of the fort, but there are the remains of up to seven structures ranging in size from huts to buildings measuring from 7 to 24m in length. The depth of chronology evident, the scale of the larger buildings and the location of them within a hill-top enclosure suggests that this is no ordinary farmstead and may instead represent a previously unlocated medieval estate centre.

A group of hut-circles at Enochdhu, Strathardle [NO06SE 20], was first excavated in the early 1970s by Dr Margaret Stewart and then later by Liz Thoms, at that time with the City of Dundee Museum Service. A detailed survey was undertaken in August, in part to clarify and enhance the existing Canmore record of the site but also to provide an illustration for a paper on the excavations.

The longest cursus monument (2.48km) so far identified in Scotland was discovered in April at Broomy Law, Melbourne [NT04SE 48], some 7km to the north-east of Biggar, its two terminals and stretches of its sides surviving as slight earthworks in unimproved ground. Such is the significance of the discovery that RCAHMS adopted a range of scales and methodologies to survey the monument, mapping the visible remains by GPS, and using aerial photographs, including historic images, to trace the cropmark ditches of its sides across the central section, where much of the monument had been levelled by the plough. In addition, the south-south-east terminal was examined in detail using a terrestrial laser scanner, and a measured plan was produced in the field by traditional plane-table and alidade.

As part of research into early castles, a survey was undertaken in the spring of 2013 of Tibbers Castle [NX89NE 2], which commands an old ford of the River Nith, SE of Drumlanrig Castle in Nithsdale. The ‘Mote de Tibris’, a 12th- or 13th-century motte-and-bailey, appears to have been rebuilt in stone by Sir Richard Siward, Sheriff of Dumfries, in the 1290s at the onset of the first Scots Wars of Independence (1296–1328). The castle was provided with a curtain wall with drum towers at the four corners and a fifth beside the entrance which enabled the passage to be protected by a portcullis. A range of buildings which ran along the west side of the inner courtyard included a chamber, great hall, services and kitchens; on the east side there was a well and well-house. However, it is as an earthwork that Tibbers is most remarkable. It is simply the largest earthwork castle in Nithsdale, as evidenced by the two successive baileys that extend along the ridge on which it sits, comparable in scale with Lochmaben, in Annandale, or Torthorwald, just outside Dumfries. Indeed this makes it one of the largest in Scotland and comparable in extent with places of first importance, like Roxburgh. It may therefore have been the main strength of the lordship of Nithsdale outside Dumfries itself, and it is to be conjectured that the castle was expanding as a market centre on the basis of the additional bailey.

RCAHMS (DES 2013, 204-5)

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