Field Visit
Date 2009 - 2010
Event ID 629996
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/629996
This promontory fort was partly excavated in 1933 at the instigation of the Marquis of Bute and described and planned in reports by Dr John Marshall (Marshall J N 1934,1935b) A saddle quern and an area of kitchen midden of bones and shells were the only finds. A later visit by the OS Archaeology Division in 1976 is noted in Canmore:
‘ …a large dun built on the edge of a coastal cliff. The semi-circular stone wall and cliff edge enclose a sub-oval level area 31.5m long (E-W) by 17.5m wide…the wall…is 2.7m wide, 0.7m high internally and 1.2m high externally with a clearly-defined 2.1m wide entrance to the east.’
At the time of our visit the general outline of the fort was much as described above, though the enclosing wall appeared slightly wider, varying from 3.6m wide S of the entrance to 2.9m wide as it contracts on the western escarpment.
A cup-marked stone in the interior, mentioned in the 1934 excavation report, was identified; the cup-marks are now very faint and obscured by turf.Near the W (seaward) side, another boulder, lying in a slight hollow, may be the ‘flat stone covering a hollowed out rock’ indicated on Marshall’s site plan. There is no sign of the area of kitchen midden identified in 1933.
The main change in the site is in the condition of the fort wall. Apparently ruinous when described by Hewison in The Isle of Bute in the olden time,Volume 1 (1893), it was also said to be ‘in a tumble-down condition’ in Marshall’s 1934 report, with ‘only here and there…something which could be recognised as a wall-face’.
By contrast the 1976 OS description states:
‘There has apparently been some reconstruction because the wall is in a very good condition…’ and certainly it now appears well-built and complete on the outer face, though much obscured by vegetation.
It is not clear whether the fort was partly rebuilt after the 1933 excavation, but it is known that a local stonemason, Dan Boag, carried out extensive reconstruction in 1961. Three lead markers are visible on the external wall at around 0.2m above the present ground surface, indicating the level at which reconstruction began. One marker to the S of the entrance is inscribed:
Dan Boag
Tommy
7/th May
1961
How much the appearance of the wall has been changed is open to question. Marshall’s 1934 report states that ‘A very large single stone 8 feet 8 inches long and 2 feet broad formed the greater part of the northern side of the entrance’, but no such stone is visible in the reconstructed wall.
Within and to the W of the entrance is a hollow which may be the remains of one of the 1933 excavation trenches, the section within the entrance passage having been backfilled. There is no sign of the second trench ‘run from the precipice eastward’.
