Mitchelhill

NT03SE 10 0628 3465.

(NT 0628 3465) Earthwork (NR)

OS 6" map, (1967).

This earthwork is situated at the foot of the NE slopes of White Hill, almost on the vally floor drained by the Back Ditch. It is overlooked from the S by Mitchelhill Rings Fort (RCAHMS 1967 No.305) and from the N and NE by the Hartree Hills and by Goseland Hill. The work has been severely reduced by cultivation, and the main surviving element at present is a shallow ditch, 20' to 30' in width, which encloses an irregularly shaped area measuring 270' from N to S by 255' transversely. The ditch has been accompanied by both an internal and an external bank of which only faint traces remain, but these are in general too indefinite to plan. The best preserved portion of the circuit is on the W side, where the bottom of the ditch is 1' 6" below the crest of the outer bank and 1' below the level of the interior. There is an entrance, about 10' in width, in the centre of the E side. The interior is featureless apart from an oval grass-grown mound measuring 18' by 11' and 1' 6" high. The nature and purpose of this mound are unknown.

RCAHMS 1967, visited 1957.

This earthwork has been almost totally destroyed by a forestry plantation, only a slight depression delimiting the course of the ditch. The mound in the interior has been too mutilated to identify. Its situation and former plan (See RCAHMS 1967 plan, fig.203), suggest that it may have been a settlement.

Re-surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS(WJ) 10 March 1964 and (DWR) 7 September 1972.