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Field Visit
Date 28 April 1914
Event ID 1115512
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1115512
Castle Greg, Camilty Hill.
Some 50 yards south of the summit of Camilty Hill, occupying a slight plateau on the crest of a broad ridge of moorland, and about three quarters of a mile south-east of Harburnhead farm steading, at an elevation of almost 900 feet above sea-level, is a fort, rectangular in shape with rounded corners, the main axis running north-north-west and south-south-east. Internally it measures between crests 180 feet in length and 152 feet in breadth. It is surrounded by a well-defined rampart, best preserved at the south end, where it shows a width of 28 feet and rises 4 feet above the interior and 7 feet above the ditch immediately in front. Two ditches, 8 feet in breadth and 2 ½ feet in depth, with an intermediate mound 7 feet in breadth, rising in height only to the general level of the ground outside, entirely surround the fort, except at the centre of the eastern flank. There the line of the ditches is interrupted by a roadway 22 feet in width, which passes through the inner rampart, in an opening 9 feet broad. On the north side of the entrance the main rampart terminates in a mound, 16 feet broad and 2 feet in height, which returns 20 feet towards the interior. Some 28 feet north of the entrance, at the base of the inner slope of the rampart, is an oval hollow, perhaps the site of a hut, 9 feet in length, 6 feet in breadth, and 9 inches in depth. Near the centre of the fort is a circular hollow, 12 feet in diameter, which apparently contained a well.
This well was excavated by Sir Daniel Wilson in 1852 to a depth of about eleven feet, without anything of importance being discovered, but elsewhere in the camp there were found ‘numerous remains of Roman glass, mortaria, amphorre, etc., all in a fragmentary condition, with some fragments of iron weapons, and a portion of a lead vessel. . .. Among the glass, were the handle, neck, and considerable remains of an unusually large glass jar, of the square form frequently found on Roman sites’ (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., i (1851-4), pp. 58-9).
To judge from Wilson's description of the objects found during his excavation it seems probable that the fort was a Roman one, a conclusion suggested also by its shape.
Coin finds from the neighbourhood of the camp have been described in Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., lii (1917-18), p. 221.
RCAHMS 1929, visited 28 April 1914.
OS map: xi S.E. ("Roman Camp").
