Archaeology Notes

Event ID 662789

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/662789

NH76SE 4 7788 6400.

(NH 7788 6400) Castledownie (NR)

(Site of) Rampart (NR)

OS 6" map, (1959)

The site of this castle, traces of which remained in 1871, and of which nothing is known, occupies a very strong position, defended naturally on the N and E and by an earthen rampart on the S and W.

The rampart stood to a height of 4' on the outside and 3' on the inside in 1871, but when Woodham visited the site only fragmentary remains survived and the castle site was obscured by undergrowth and fallen trees.

Name Book 1871; A A Woodham 1956.

Castledownie, a heavily mutilated defensive structure overgrown with trees and bracken, is in too poor a state to classify. There is no trace of a medieval castle as suggested by the Ordnance Survey Name Book (ONB, 1871) and the pecked rectangle published on OS 6", and a more likely explanation is that it was a dun with outworks.

It is situated on a spur, and is protected naturally by slopes in the NW and SE, and by a shallow gully in the SW. In the NE the spur continues as a knife-edged ridge. The only artificial features surviving are two ramparts, one in the SW along the inner edge of the gully, and the other partly crossing the spur in the NE, which together with the natural slopes in the SE and the possibly partly artificially scarped slopes in the NW, enclose a sub-rectangular area measuring c. 30.0m NW-SE by 17.0m. The 1959 OS 6" map shows the SW rampart continuing along the top of the slopes in the NW but this is no longer evident. Within the enclosed area is a knoll, probably natural, which is quarried from the SW and crossed on its NE arc by the NE rampart. Several boulders, few of them earthfast, lie about the interior making no intelligible pattern. There is a gap near the centre of the SW rampart, and also at its SE extremity where it stops short of the natural slopes, either of which could be an entrance.

Resurveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (A A), 12 December 1970.

This has been a desk assessment area.

J Wordsworth, SSSIs, Scottish Natural Heritage, 1993

Promontory fort - re-visited.

Ramparts if any are poughed out and natural area is a barley field. Ramparts at edges in woods eroding but not actively.

CFA/MORA Coastal Assessment Survey 1998.