Peelhill

NS63NW 11 6454 3658.

(Area: NS 644 365) A 6th or 7th century BC founder's scrap-metal hoard of LBA objects was recovered, at the end of February/beginning of March 1961, from a reclaimed bog on Peelhill farm. The hoard, of broken and partly melted-down objects, consisted of 28 spearheads, 1 axe, 1 sword, a ferrule, and 3 rings. It is exhibited in the Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum.

The original position of the hoard could not be determined due to the disturbance of the bog by reclamation work and the scattering of the hoard by the plough; but a systematic search is thought to have recovered the whole hoard. The bog lay in a basin-shaped hollow, about 100 yards across in a glacial moraine about 300 yards S of and overlooking the farm.

J M Coles and J G Scott 1965

According to Mr Craig, the farmer's son, the hoard was found in the basin-shaped hollow centred at NS 6454 3658.

Visited by OS (RD) 17 March 1966

Some of the pieces of this hoard have been twisted by heat and others are mere fragments, features which indicate that they were the raw materials of a smith and that the hoard is a collection of objects made ready for melting down and recasting. (Accession no. in Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum: A6441).

RCAHMS 1978.

Schmidt and Burgess give a detailed description and illustration of the socketed axe, of slender form with rectangular-sectioned body, while Burgess and Colquhoun describe one of the swords, of Ewart Park type - Northern step 2.

P K Schmidt and C B Burgess 1981; C B Burgess and I Colquhoun 1988.

A leaf-shaped spearhead, part of the Peelhill hoard, broken at the neck and with possible traces of vegetal matter at the base of the shank, is now in Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, Accession no. A9101.

J Mair 1991.