Archaeology Notes

Event ID 667471

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/667471

NJ42NE 5 4729 2605.

(NJ 4729 2605) Cnoc Cailliche (NAT) Camp (NR)

OS 6" map, Aberdeenshire, 2nd ed., (1902)

Cnoc Cailliche - the old wifes' or witches' hill. It has an oval enclosure on its summit, accepted as an Iron Age hill fort by Simpson (1932). It measures 60 yards N-S by 31 yards and is formed by a ditch, 13 feet wide and 3 feet deep, with traces of an earthen bank on the inside and a slight counterscarp bank on the outside. The inside area is stony with no evidence of structures (Simpson 1930). The Ordnance Survey Name Book (ONB, 1867) refers to local supposition that there was a wooden palisade on the bank. Jervise (1871) describes it as an elliptical entrenchment enclosing about 100 acres. On the S and W sides, which are easiest of access, a ditch surrounds the base. The remains of a dyke upon the north is said to have stretched, at one time, to the Hill of Noth (NJ 48 29).

Name Book 1867; A Jervise 1871; W D Simpson 1930; W D Simpson 1932.

A small fort, generally as described by Simpson, except that the inner bank is primarily of stones, not earth. Both inner and outer ramparts are greatly reduced. The entrance, c.3.0m wide, is in the NE. The 'entrenchment enclosing about 100 acres' mentioned by Jervise, clearly is not the fort but possibly refers to an old field wall which skirts the base of the hill.

Revised at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (NKB) 28 September 1967.

An Iron Age sherd from this fort is in the Royal Museum of Scotland (RMS, formerly the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland [NMAS]).

Proc Soc Antiq Scot 1974.

This oval enclosure, which crowns a shoulder of the rounded, 352m OD hill near the top of Strathbogie, is typical of the simple later prehistoric forts of Grampian. It consists of a shallow ditch (4m wide and 1m deep) with a stony bank on its inner edge and a slight bank on the outer edge. The subdued defences and the dead ground surrounding the fort (especially to N and E) suggest that defence was not an overwhelming priority for the builders.

I A G Shepherd 1986.

(Visible on air photographs AAS/93/01/G2/1-4. Copies held by Grampian Regional Council).

Information from M Greig, Grampian Regional Council, March 1994.

(Air photographs listed).

NMRS, MS/712/47.

(Air photographs: AAS/00/02/G3/15 and AAS/00/02/CT).

NMRS, MS/712/100.

Scheduled as 'Cnoc Cailliche, fort 360m WSW of Upper Wheedlemont... visible as an upstanding earthwork and ditch, situated in rough pasture on the summit of a cone-shaped hill...'

Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 7 November 2007.