Note
Date 1988
Event ID 1144973
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1144973
Castle Law NT 2290 6387 NT26SW 2
This multivallate fort occupies a spur on the SE side of Castlelaw Hill, 150m NNW of Castlelaw Steading. The fort measures about 90m by 45m internally and its defences comprise a low inner rampart set about 9m within two ditches accompanied by counter scarp banks. Both of the counterscarp banks are much denuded but the, crest of the inner stands up to 1.7m above the bottom of the outer ditch. There are entrances on the E, Sand W. Excavations were carried out in the fort in 1931-2 and again in 1948, principally on the E. In 1948 re-excavation of the innermost rampart on the N side of the E entrance revealed that its clay core had been reinforced with layers of brushwood, vertical stakes and horizontal timbers; a palisade trench was also found near the back of the rampart, its posts rising through the clay core. The earlier excavations had uncovered a palisade trench at the front of this rampart, on the opposite side of the entrance, but there is no evidence that either belongs to an earlier enclosure; on the other hand there are clear indications that at one point the inner counterscarp bank overlay a post-trench, which probably formed part of an independent timber defence line. At the E entrance, on the line of both the inner and outer defences, traces of a complex sequence of gate-structures were uncovered, indicating of themselves that the full structural history of the fort's defences cannot be understood without further excavation. The nature of the later occupation of the site is not in doubt, however. After the abandonment of the outer defences a souterrain was constructed within the hollow of the inner ditch on the S side of the entrance. It measures 17m in length and varies from 1m to 2m in breadth, terminating in a corbelled apse at the Send. The entrance is at the N end, and halfway along its W side a short passage, its roofing slabs still in position, leads into a beehive chamber about 3.5m in diameter. Finds from the souterrain include an enamelled brooch, a Romano-Celtic mounting, fragments of blue green bottle-glass and five sherds of Samian, all of second century AD date (RMS, HH 425-45). The 1931-2 excavations also recovered a few sherds of coarse pottery, fragments of lignite artefacts, a lignite finger-ring, some small stone balls, an upper stone from a rotary quern and a sherd of Samian (RMS, HH 446-63) from the area of the outer gateway at the E entrance. Finds from the later excavation were restricted to one sherd of pottery and a small stone ball (RMS, HH 574-5).
RCAHMS 1988
(RCAIVIS 1929, 74, no. 102; Childe 1933; Piggott and Piggott 1952, 191-4; Feachem 1977, 136)
