Archaeology Notes

Event ID 729113

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/729113

NX88NE 3 8501 8604.

(NX 8501 8604) Earthwork (NR)

OS 6" map (1957)

'Mote', The Orchard, on low-lying ground near the Cairn Water is an earthwork consisting of a slightly raised sub-circular platform, apparently with peripheral stonework, surrounded by a broad double ditch with a massive medial rampart, and another arc of outer rampart on the south.

RCAHMS 1920, visited 1912

The central platform measures 103' x 116', the inner ditch is 23'-26' broad, flat-bottomed and soft underfoot: the medial rampart is 5'6" high on the north, 5' on the east and rather flat topped at the highest point; the outer ditch is 40' wide, 7'-10' deep and mostly wet.

Possibly for the purpose of flooding the outer ditch there is a break in the continuity of the outer scarp on the south, with a corresponding lowering of the inner rampart to a level about 1' above the present floor of the ditch. There is a slight hollow in the scarp of the outer ditch at the east end of the outer rampart.

A modern ditch has been cut on the south to drain the outer ditch. Information from OS Recorder (ES) 23 April 1975

This earthwork is generally as described. In the middle of the central platform is a faint stony rise about 13.0m in diameter. There is no sign of an entrance although the medial bank is very low in the N and S. The flat-bottomed ditches are typically medieval and clearly this work is a moated earthwork though its precise purpose is uncertain.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (BS) 3 June 1975

Visible on Ordnance Survey large scale vertical air photograph (OS 73/396/318).

(Undated) informnation in NMRS.

This site is listed in an Atlas of Scottish History (McNeill and MacQueen 1996) as a moated site.

Information from RCAHMS (DE) September 1997.