Archaeology Notes

Event ID 723884

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/723884

NX06NW 5 0121 6682

See also NX06NW 4.

Craigoch Castle (NR) (Site of)

OS 6" map (1847).

(NX 0121 6682) Earthwork (NR)

OS 6" map (1957).

The entrance may have been in the N, where there is a cleft a few feet wide. Near the waterfall there is 'a circle which seems to have been a kiln'.

G Wilson 1885.

A circular dun (R W Feachem 1963), thought in 1847 (Name Book 1847) to be the site of Craigoch Castle (NX06NW 4). It measures 27ft diameter internally, within a wall-thickness of some 7ft, and stands on the W side of the grass-grown summit of an isolated rock, protected naturally on the W by a burn and on the NE and E by a natural ditch. Within the dun are two cup-shaped depressions 4ft in diameter and 1ft deep.

Outside the wall, on the W, between it and the outer bank, there is an oblong hollow some 6 to 7ft in length and of indeterminate breadth, while on the east side of the dun, occupying the remainder of the summit, there is an oblong enclosure 32ft by 12ft. The position of the entrance is uncertain.

RCAHMS 1912

A circular structure or hollow, c.9.0m in diameter, is all that can now be identified on the summit of the rocky knoll. From the evidence it is impossible to verify the classification 'dun'.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (RD) 19 February 1968

Situated on a rocky knoll 230m NE of High Mitton farmhouse there are the remains of a substantial stone structure. It is roughly rectangular on plan and measures 14.5m from E to W by 17m transversely over a mound of rubble which varies from 6m in thickness and 0.6m in height on the W to 2.9m by 0.5m on the E. A number of external facing stones are visible on the N and W. The structure is situated on the W side of the knoll but there are also slight traces of debris continuing along the N side and along the E lip. Although it is possible that these are the remains of a dun, it is more likely that they are the remains of a severely-robbed tower-house, perhaps Craigoch Castle. The remains of a stoney bank, reduced to a stoney scarp 0.9m high, extends along the S side of the knoll; to the E its line is extended by a modern fieldwall.

OS 6-inch map, Wigtownshire, 1st ed (1849), sheet ix; OS Name Book; G Wilson 1885; P H M'Kerlie 1906; RCAHMS 1912; R W Feachem 1977; RCAHMS 1985, visited September 1984,