Archaeology Notes

Event ID 692293

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/692293

NO67SW 1 6334 7228.

(NO 6334 7228) Green Cairn (NAT) Fort (NR)

OS 1:10,000 map, (1980)

Listed as 'Finella's Castle (or Kincardine Castle), Balbegno'.

M A Cotton 1954.

Green Cairn: A vitrified fort which may have measured about 150 by 50ft internally, but has been under cultivation so that all that remains is a stony mound representing part of the rampart or wall. Vitrified masses can be seen among the debris and dragged into the interior by cultivation.

R W Feachem 1963; O G S Crawford 1949; W Camden 1806.

Green Cairn, a vitrified fort with outworks on a low knoll commanding an extensive view. The denuded vitrified wall around the level summit of the knoll is spread to an average width of 11.0m and 0.8m average height. It encloses a roughly oval area measuring about 50.0m NE-SW by 20.0m transversely. The entrance is not evident. A gap in the SW is a mutilation to facilitate robbing. Recent digging for road metalling in the N has exposed four contiguous boulders of the inner wall face, and the partly vitrified rubble core. At the time of investigation the course of three outer works protecting the easiest approach around the NE shoulder of the knoll could be distinctly seen as curving lines of greener, higher growth in a crop of oats. A possible entrance gap, about 2.5 m wide, was evident in each. The line of the inner outwork can be traced as a change of slope around the SE side of the knoll and as a scarp around the SW side. There is no sign of the other two continuing, but they may have terminated on what would have been bog at the base of the knoll on the S and W.

Resurveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (A A) 21 August 1971.

Two pieces of vitrified rock from here are in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS, Accession no:

HH 644).

Information from NMAS accessions list.

A possible palisade line may be seen in the section of a small sand and gravel quarry outside the principal vitrified wall on the SE side of this fort.

I Ralston and W Watt 1982.

Air photographs: AAS/94/05/G12/1-7.

NMRS, MS/712/21.

Location cited as NO 6334 7228: nominated as Site of Regional Significance.

[Air photographic imagery listed].

NMRS, MS/712/35, visited 13 March 1979.