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Desk Based Assessment
Date 5 February 1965
Event ID 976571
Category Recording
Type Desk Based Assessment
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/976571
(NO 0998 1544) Castle Law. (NAT) Fort (NR)
OS 6" map (1959)
A fort of two concentric walls and extensive outer defences (see plans by Christison and Bell) with 'Abernethy Type' timber-laced ramparts (Cotton 1954) (the defences show evidence of vitrification and beam-holes containing charcoal occur in the inner wall (Bell 1893)). Stewart (information from MEC Stewart to OS, 20 November 1962) and Fairhurst (information from H Fairhurst to MEC Stewart) suggest four possible phases:-
1. A single-walled timber-laced oval fort with an entrance to the east, possibly burnt during the Agricolan campaign.
2. An Iron Age contour fort whose builders added a second rampart with an entrance to the east and who connected these two entrances by a long stone-walled passage way. This fortification was never completed and was possibly interrupted by the campaigns of Septimus Severus.
3. Dark Age- Pictish? fort whose builders added extensive bank and ditch foritifications on the south side and nuclear enclosures to the north and west.
4. In early medieval times the fortified area may have been used as a stock enclosure, with settlement to the south and on the northern scarp.
Bell says that the 'Sheep Fank' shown on his plan was a circular construction of stones, which requires further examination, and that the semi-circular work also shown (in the NE of the interior) was the remains of a watch-tower constructed by one of the late Lords Ruthven of Freeland.
Information from OS (DJC) 5 February 1965.
Sources:
1. OS 6" 1959
2. Cotton 1954
3. Christison 1900
4. Bell 1893
5. Corr. 6" (MEC Stewart 20.11.62)
a. H Fairhurst.
