Blyth Bank Hill

NT14NW 7 1370 4650.

(NT 1370 4650) Camp (NR)

OS 6" map (1957)

Fort and Enclosure. The broad summit of Blyth Bank Hill terminates at the SW end in a low rocky knoll, on and around which are the remains of a fort and of a secondary enclosure. The site is easily accessible across almost level ground on the ENE, while the slopes on the other three sides are not particularly steep.

Two distinct systems of fortification can be discerned, one comprising three ramparts and the other two, but it is uncertain whether or not they are of different dates. The inner system, represented on the plan by ramparts 1A, 1B and 1C, encloses an area measuring 180' by 140'. All the ramparts are heavily denuded, and for the most part they appear simply in the form of low scarps. There are, however, some slight indications that the innermost and medial ramparts were kerbed, or revetted, with stone, while traces of an external ditch can be seen on either side of the ENE entrance through the inner rampart. Corresponding entrances exist at this end of the fort in the medial and outer ramparts, but the outer one has been widened by later ploughing.

The outer system has consisted of two ramparts (D and E) but these have been largely destroyed by former cultivation. On the SE half of the fort they have entirely disappeared, and round the NW half the inner rampart has been reduced to a scarp, while the outer rampart is represented by two lengths of a very low bank which has spread to a width of 20'.

Since the two systems are nowhere in contact their chronological relationship is uncertain. Thus the outer system could be the earlier of two successive and independent schemes of fortification, or alternatively it could simply be a development of the inner system, constructed in the course of a single occupation. A later occupation of the site is however attested by a ruinous enclosure-wall (II) which crosses the interior of the inner system of fortification and overlies ramparts 1A and 1B on the N. If, as seems likely, the stretch of rampart 1B immediately N of the entrance to the fort was incorporated in this later wall, the enclosure will have measured internally about 190' by 120'.

(Information from R W Feachem notebook 1959, 110)

RCAHMS 1967, visited 1959

Generally as described, the fort has been reduced by ploughing on its N and W sides and is generally ill- defined elsewhere. No traces remain of ramparts E and D on the W, or 1C on the S. No internal structures are visible.

RCAHMS plan revised at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (DWR) 28 September 1972

The fort and enclosure are visible on large scale air photographs (OS 71/395/009 and 38-9, flown 1971).

Information from RCAHMS