Archaeology Notes

Event ID 729242

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/729242

NX97SW 5 91224 72666.

(NX 9120 7266) Hills Tower (NR)

OS 6" map (1946)

Hills Tower, built between 1528 and 1566, measures 23'7" by 29'9" and has been restored. A wing, dated 1721, is attached to its E side. In the W side of the courtyard is a gatehouse probably dating from the first half of the 16th century.

D MacGibbon and T Ross 1889; RCAHMS 1914, visited 1911

Hills Tower is as described and illustrated except that the steading, attached to the W side in the illustration has been removed. The wing on the E side is in use as a dwelling but the tower itself is unoccupied. The whole structure is in a good state of repair.

Visited by OS (WDJ) 3 July 1964

In carrying out restoration work plans of both the Tower (c. 1530) and the House (1721) have been prepared. Copies of these plans are with the NMRS. Three masons' marks have been recorded on the dressed freestone of the Tower. Both garderobes and their individual chutes have been uncovered. Finds recovered from the grounds include clay-pipe bowls and stems from the mid 17th - late 19th centuries; three fragments of late medieval pottery (15th - 16th centuries); several fragments of flint apparently used for the production of gun-flints; one small whetstone; and a small deep cobalt blue glass bead, possibly of early medieval date.

J Williams 1971