Kerrera, The Little Horse Shoe

NM 817 271. This fort occupies the level summit of an isolated rocky hillock overlooking the S side of the bay called 'The Little Horse Shoe', and within 100 m of the shore. Although it stands at a height of only 15 m OD, the fort is difficult of access since the flanks of the hillock consist of sheer rock cliffs, broken at two points, on the NW and NE, by steep grass-covered slopes.

Oval on plan (Fig. 39), the fort measures 36 m by 27 m within a single wall drawn round the extreme edge of the summit of the knoll. Though reduced for the most part to a slight band of stony debris, the line of the wall can be traced for the whole circuit apart from a short gap on the NE; it appears to have measured from 2.5 m to 3 m in average thickness. On the SW, however, where the rubble core survives as a grass-grown bank to a height of about I m, with a considerable number of stones belonging to the lowest course of both the inner and outer faces still in position, the thickness of the wall increases to a maximum of 3.6 m on either side of the entrance. The entrance itself is approached from the outside up a slight cleft in the rock, which has been widened and accentuated by the fort-builders. At its outer end the entrance passage is 2'4 m wide, narrowing slightly to 2'1 m at its inner end, the side-walls giving no indication of having been checked for a door. Within the level interior of the fort there are several irregular spreads of stones, now overgrown by grass; as they do not appear to form any significant pattern, they probably represent debris discarded by the stone-robbers.

Outside the fort wall on the NE a thin band of stony debris, measuring up to 1'2 m in thickness, evidently represents the remains of a wall built round the margin of a fairly level shelf some 3 m below the summit, and across the neck of a steep grassy gully leading up to the shelf through the cliff. Clearly this outwork was of a much less substantial nature than the fort wall, but it seems likely that it was built at the same time since the gap in the fort wall on the NE may well mark the position of a postern giving access from the interior of the fort to the outwork.

RCAHMS 1975, visited April 1970.

Surveyed with alidade and plane-table at 1mm:1ft. Redrawn in ink and published at the reduced scale of 1:1000 (RCAHMS 1975, fig. 39).

This small fortification stands on the summit of a precipitous hillock and is roughly oval on plan, measuring 36m from NE to SW by 27m transversely within a wall largely reduced to a band of rubble. Where best preserved, on the SW, however, stones of the inner and outer faces survive, indicating a maximum thickness of 3.6m on either side of the entrance, which opens onto a cleft in the rocks that provides access on this side. There was possibly a second entrance in a gap on the NE, outside which traces of an outer wall can be followed along the margin of the hillock, taking in a lower shelf and blocking access up another gully on this side; no trace of this outer wall has been found extending round the margin of a similar but larger shelf on the SE. Several spreads of stones are visible within the interior, some of which may have been discarded by later stone robbers, but the preparation of a conservation plan in 1995 identified one as possible remains of a rectangular building (see WoSAS record).

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2582