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Tor Hill
Fort (Prehistoric), Unidentified Pottery (Iron Age)
Site Name Tor Hill
Classification Fort (Prehistoric), Unidentified Pottery (Iron Age)
Canmore ID 50072
Site Number NT14SE 6
NGR NT 1752 4091
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/50072
- Council Scottish Borders, The
- Parish Stobo
- Former Region Borders
- Former District Tweeddale
- Former County Peebles-shire
NT14SE 6 1752 4091.
(NT 1752 4091) Fort (NR)
OS 6" map (1963)
On Tor Hill there is a small bivallate fort with an unfinished annexe. On three sides the steep fall of the ground provides strong natural protection, and the only easy approach to the site is by way of a narrow saddle on the S.
The fort measures internally 155ft by 100ft. For the most part the ramparts (A, B) appear as heather-clad, stony banks standing to a height of about 3ft, but in places stone-robbing combined with natural erosion have reduced them to mere scarps. On the SE the two ramparts lie very close together, but on the NE the gap between them widens to as much as 45ft. A slight terrace at the foot of the WSW sector of B probably represents the last vestige of an external quarry-ditch; while a partly natural scarp (C), 90ft in length, situated 20ft outside the NW sector of B, has the appearance of having been trimmed. There are two entrances, the main one, on the W., being represented by gaps 10ft wide in both ramparts. At the second entrance, on the NE, which is only 5ft wide, the gap in the outer rampart opens on to a faint track which can be followed for some distance obliquely down the flank of the spur. The interior, now covered with heather, exhibits no surface traces of habitations, but a piece of domestic pottery of Iron Age date was picked up in it in 1951.
The annexe is slightly larger than the fort, measuring 160ft by 120ft within a rampart (D) which attains a maximum height of 4ft and is accompanied on the N. and E. by a shallow external quarry-ditch. As the plan shows, there are three entrances to the annexe, none of which communicates directly with the fort. A marker trench (E), which lies 25ft to 45ft outside the quarry-ditch of rampart D, presumably represents an unfinished attempt to construct an outer line of defence for the annexe. A gap 25ft wide has been left in the marker trench for an entrance, opposite the E. entrance in rampart D.
(Information from R W Feachem notebook 1961, 25)
RCAHMS 1967, visited 1961
This fort is generally as described.
Resurveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (EGC) 5 June 1961 and (SFS) 20 April 1975
Photographed by the RCAHMS in 1980.
Note (13 October 2015 - 20 October 2016)
This fort is situated on the rocky spine of Tor Hill, which forms the N spur of Torbank Hill. The S end of the fort dominates the short sharp slope that drops into the saddle separating Tor Hill from the hillside to the S, and certainly blocks access out onto the spur from that direction. Its defences comprise two main elements, namely a bivallate enclosure on the SSW and what has been described as an annexe of 0.15ha with an outer unfinished line of defence added on the NNE. This view of the defences, however, based on the plan drawn up by RCAHMS investigators in 1961, probably telescopes a much more complex sequence of construction which cannot be unravelled without excavation. The inner enclosure at the SSW end, for example, which measures about 47m from NNE to SSW by little more than 27m transversely (0.1ha) within a grass-grown bank of rubble, may well have been inserted into a larger enclosure, reusing the entrance in the outer rampart on the WNW. On the plan, the latter appears to cut back sharply across the spine of the spur on the N, but this too may be an adaptation of an earlier plan, in which the supposed annexe on the NNE and the outer rampart on the SSW formed part of a single sinuous enclosure on the summit, measuring internally some 120m in length by between 35m and 40m in breadth (0.38ha); notably not only is the annexe rampart accompanied by an external ditch, but there are also traces of a ditch outside the outer rampart on the SW. This interpretation would explain why the annexe, which apparently has entrances on the W, E and SE, has no direct link to the interior of the supposedly bivallate fort. Indeed, it is likely that the entrance on the SE, formed against the outer rampart of the bivallate fort, is an original entrance of this larger enclosure, lying midway along the ESE side at a re-entrant in the lip of the natural slope and served by a track that can be faintly detected dropping down to the S. In this rather different interpretation, the significance of the marker trench identified between 10m and 15m outside the annexe on the N and E respectively also changes. Like most other 'marker' trenches in Scotland, it is more likely to have held a timber palisade, which, projected round the contours of the spur may have enclosed an area measuring perhaps as much as 140m from NNE to SSW by up to 55m transversely (0.6ha). No trace of any round-houses can be seen within any of the enclosures on the summit of the spur, but a single timber round-house defined by shallow grooves lies on a terrace at the foot of the slope below the defences on the W.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 20 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3629
Sbc Note
Visibility: This is an upstanding earthwork or monument.
Information from Scottish Borders Council
