Archaeology Notes

Event ID 703411

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/703411

NS56SE 33 5566 6263.

(NS 5566 6263) Earthwork (NR)

OS 6" map, (1967)

This earthwork comprises a roughly circular enclosure some 30.0m in diameter, surrounded by a deep moat 9.0m wide, interrupted on the E side by a causeway, 8.0m in width. But for a modern drainage cut, this moat would fill with water. There are traces of inner and outer banks formed by upcast from the ditch. The whole earthwork is densely covered by trees and shrubs.

H Fairhurst and J G Scott 1953; Visited by OS (J L D) 1 April 1954.

Excavations carried out by Glasgow Archaeol Soc in 1959-60 showed that a rougly circular house, 16' in internal diameter, with a well-made, central post socket had stood just S of the centre of the enclosure. Its site had been levelled by removing earth and placing cobbles. An inner foundation kerb of stone was found under the inner bank of the enclosure, and the entrance causeway was paved and kerbed. Finds include three stones with incomplete perforation, two perforated shale discs, and the upper stone of a rotary quern.

Talbot (1973) suggests that this feature, comparable with others in the vicinity (NS46SE 3, NS56SW 4, and NS56SE 32) was a Norman ring-work. (In 1960 it was regarded provisionally as a Dark Age homestead.)

A Johnson 1959; 1960; E J Talbot 1973.