Rheindown Wood

NH54NW 47 515 476

NH 44/54 OS 515476 No. 86 Rheindown Wood.

Coming up from rough ground and from an easterly direction, and crossing below an electricity line almost at right angles, is a flat topped linear earthwork 8 yards wide. It has a small ditch at the upper and south side. On the north side the ditch is very sub¬stantial, 4 yards wide at the bottom, and appears similar to a sun¬ken road. It is then in a fir wood, having turned uphill slightly, and keeping close to the edge of a steep bank above a burn. There is now a rampart at the side of this fosse next the burn. Near where this rampart starts there appear to be faint traces of earth¬works of indefinite shape, one of which could be part of a flat top¬ped circular mound. There is another circular mound a few yards to the S.S.E., opposite a substantial rampart which has a base now 5 yards wide, and which runs in a southerly direction and stops a little distance short of a timber loading stance at a road junction. This rampart contains very much more material than could have come from the upcast of the small ditch at it's east side. The 8 yard wide rampart can be traced at the other side of a tarred road and it continues in the same westerly direction. Near the top of the fir wood it appears to have narrowed to a width of 5 yards before all trace is lost. Also 65 yards up from this road there are 4 mounds a few yards to the south of this linear feature. The near¬est one is the largest and very prominent. There appears to be another similar mound or cairn a short distance further up. It is mentioned in the Wardlaw Manuscript that scouts of the Clan MacKenzie were observed above Rheindown about 1577. This army was probably camped in the area during this disturbed period. The rampart running north to south with the 5 yard base, and perhaps the one at

the edge of the bank above the burn, may have been re-used.

At OS 513476 a shallow flat bottomed ditch 6 feet wide runs from the burn for a few yards to meet the road, and continues on the other side in a S.W. direction to meet traces of minor earthworks of indefinite shape near the fir wood boundary. Near the road and 12 yards south of the ditch, there is a crag and tail mound 5 yards in diameter which may be an outlier of the aforementioned cairn-field further south.

Coghill et al 1989