Gallow Hill

On the NE flank of Gallow Hill there is a complex of conjoined enclosures, probably fields, a scatter of clearance cairns and an oval hut-circle. The hut-circle is terraced into a N-facing slope about 30m NW of a planticrub (HU25SE 518) within one of the probable fields. It measures 7m from NE to SW by 5.5m transversely within a boulder-faced bank 1.2m thick and 0.8m high. The field enclosures are defined by spread rubble-walls forming what are probably five or six irregular conjoined plots or fields. In places there are slight negative and positive lynchets adjacent to the field walls, suggesting that at least parts of the interiors have been cultivated. There is a scatter of small cairns, presumably field clearance, within three of the fields. The SW extent of the conjoined fields is markedly straight, lying along the line of a field boundary that extends for over 220m to the NNW and about 60m to the SSE, where is abuts an even more extensive field boundary that extends across the SE flank of Gallow Hill (see HU25SE 603). The spatial arrangement suggests that the conjoined fields post-date the NNW to SSE boundary.

Visited by RCAHMS (DCC) 12 June 2010.