Milquhanzie Hill

This fort occupies the domed summit of Milquhanzie Hill (350m OD), which offers commanding views of upper Strathearn to the S and of the route to Glenalmond and the Sma' Glen to the W. Steep slopes afford the site great natural protection on all sides except the ENE, where it is linked by a saddle to a ridge that extends for about 5km to the NE. The 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Perthshire 1866, sheet xcv) shows a coniferous plantation covering most of the hill, and several tree stumps survive. More recent disturbance has been caused by the construction within the fort of three telecommunications masts, each with an associated building, and an access road which has been bulldozed to the summit on the W side.

The fort measures about 45m by 40m within triple ramparts, which may be of two phases. The inner rampart is only well defined on the ENE, where it survives as a scarp up to 0.9m high terminating on the S at the top of an almost precipitous slope. The modern track obscures its line (and probably also the entrance) on the N, but it re-emerges on the NW as a slight scarp which dies away as it returns towards the SW. The middle and outer ramparts diverge from the line of the inner one on the W, and therefore may be of a different period of construction. They are also best-preserved on the ENE, where they appear as stony banks up to 5.5m thick and 1m high; a cable trench cuts through them on this side, exposing several large stones, especially where the trench crosses the front edge of the middle rampart. There is an inturned entrance through both ramparts on the N, approached obliquely from the NE by a trackway. On the NW the ramparts are cut by the modern track, which has been scoured down to bedrock, exposing the bottom of a possible rock cut ditch in front of the outer rampart. To the S of the track the ramparts appear as slight scarps, dying out on the steep W face of the hill. Within the fort, amongst the modern structures, there are at least five subrectangular stances levelled into the hill, measuring up to about 6.5m by 4m, which may the sites of small huts. One of these stances lies outside the inner rampart, on the W side of the hill.

(EARN96 200)

Visited by RCAHMS (SDB) 15 October 1996.

RCAHMS surveyed the fort at Milquanzie Hill with self-reducing alidade and plane-table on 5 September 1996 at a scale of 1:500. The resultant plan was redrawn in ink and published at a scale of 1:1000.

This fort is situated on the rounded knoll that forms the summit of Milquhanzie Hill, which is itself part of a long steep-sided ridge. The SE and W flanks are protected by the steep slopes, but elsewhere on the NE and NW up to three ramparts are visible, all of them reduced to little more than stony scarps no more than 0.9m high; the inner rampart, however, which probably encloses an oval area measuring about 45m from NE to SW by 40m transversely (0.14ha), is not entirely concentric to the outer pair and in 1996 RCAHMS investigators suggested that it may represent a separate period of enclosure. The two outer ramparts swing round the NE flank and peter out on the steep NW flank, where in 1996 the construction of an access road to the summit had exposed traces of a rock-cut ditch in front of the outermost. If representing a separate period of construction, these enclose a much larger area measuring up to 60m from NE to SW by 50m transversely (0.23ha), with an entrance approached obliquely by a trackway on the N; the gaps in the rampart are staggered in such away as to expose the left-hand side of any one approaching from the exterior, rather than the right. Whether this entrance also served the inner enclosure is lost beneath the access road, which serves three telecommunication masts. Within the larger interior there are traces of five small sub-rectangular platforms, one of which lies between the inner and middle rampart on the W.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2636