Trial Trench

Date August 2007

Event ID 558051

Category Recording

Type Trial Trench

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/558051

NN 104 742 (fort) In August 2007 a trial trench evaluation (hand-cut trenches) was carried out on the public space known as the Parade in the centre of Fort William. Further trenches were excavated in and outside the remains of the nearby fort which gives its name to the modern town (in Gaelic: An Gearasdan – ‘the Garrison’). The trenches targeted anomalies produced by an earlier geophysical survey.

The aim of the project was to examine the potential for the survival of remains relating to the early history of the

town (Maryburgh) which grew up around the fort which was first constructed in 1654. The town is reported to have been destroyed by the garrison of the fort in March 1746 in order to deprive Jacobite forces of cover when they began a siege of the fort during the later part of the ’45.

A series of trenches in the fort established that very little if anything remains of buried archaeological features related to the life of the fort – at least in the areas investigated. Much of the fort was destroyed following the arrival of the railway in the late 19th century. The portion of the fort surviving was used as a railway yard up until the 1970s and over time engine sheds, inspection pits and a turntable removed any trace of the fort’s interior, which included barrack blocks and other buildings. Midden deposits were encountered heaped up against the exterior of the wall, at the rear of the beach, and there may be potential for earlier midden deposits in other locations outside the fort.

On the Parade, the course of a former burn contained various layers of rich midden material, including ceramics and bottle fragments. Much of this material appears to relate to the 17th and 18th-century occupation of the Parade by buildings which formed the settlement of Maryburgh. Other trenches exposed

quantities of fire-damaged wine bottles of 18th-century type, which along with charcoal-rich deposits and burnt daub provide evidence for the destruction of the town by the garrison in 1746. A series of postholes may relate to the early settlement or later activity.

Archive deposited with RCAHMS, Highland Council.

Funder: Highland Council, Lochaber Community Fund (Highland 2007), Heritage Lottery Fund.