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Cademuir Hill
Cord Rig (Prehistoric), Cultivation Remains (Period Unassigned), Fort (Prehistoric), Ring Groove House(S) (Period Unassigned)
Site Name Cademuir Hill
Classification Cord Rig (Prehistoric), Cultivation Remains (Period Unassigned), Fort (Prehistoric), Ring Groove House(S) (Period Unassigned)
Alternative Name(s) Cademuir Hill 1
Canmore ID 51282
Site Number NT23NW 13
NGR NT 2300 3745
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/51282
- Council Scottish Borders, The
- Parish Peebles
- Former Region Borders
- Former District Tweeddale
- Former County Peebles-shire
NT23NW 13 2300 3745.
(NT 2300 3745) Fort (NR)
OS 6" map (1965)
Cademuir Hill, 2 1/2 miles SW of Peebles, consists of two prominent ridges lying at right angles to one another and linked by a narrow saddle. On the summit of the westernmost ridge, which rises to a height of 1314' OD and commands extensive views in all directions, there is a fort measuring 700' by 400' within a stone wall (A) 10' in thickness. Steep slopes afford the site great natural protection on all sides except the SW, where the ground falls somewhat less abruptly down a series of rocky terraces.
On the SE side, the wall has almost entirely vanished down the face of the hill, but elsewhere it appears as a considerable band of debris, in which numerous stones of either face are visible. There are two original entrances, each about 10' wide, in the E and SW sides respectively; two other gaps, both of which are modern, occur close to the N corner and on the WNW. Except on the SE, wall A is accompanied at a distance varying between 20' and 40' by an unfinished rampart (B) which appears for short dis- tances on the NW and SW as a low bank, with an intermittent external quarry-ditch exhibiting gang work, but elsewhere simply as an irregular low scarp.
Within the interior of the fort, which measures 5 1/2 acres in extent, the surface traces of at least 35 ring-groove houses are visible, and there is room for a least as many more. The diameters of the houses range from 15' and 36', the majority being in the vicinity of 25'.
On the comparatively level ground near the centre of the fort there is a slight and intermittent turf-covered band of rubble (C1) from which a few large boulders protrude. Two equally slight, artificial-looking scarps (C2 and C3) in the NE part of the fort may represent the continuation of this feature, which could conceivably be the remains of an earlier defence demolished when wall A was built. (Information from
R W Feachem notebook 1958, 83; 1959, 1)
RCAHMS 1967, visited 1959
The fort is generally as described with some thirty-three timber houses still visible. Within the interior the unsurveyable traces of C1, 2 and 3 can be seen but are so slight as to defy interpretation.
Surveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (DWR) 15 June 1971
Note (20 October 2015 - 16 August 2016)
This fort, which is one of the larger in Peeblesshire, crowns the western summit of the Cademuir ridge. Rhomboidal on plan, its interior measures about 255m from NNE to SSW by 145m transversely (2.1ha) and contains traces of at least 35 round-houses, some marked by no more than a shallow platform and others by a shallow platform encircled by a groove; some of the ring-groove houses at the N end of the interior are the most complete and well-defined examples of this type of timber round-house visible anywhere in southern Scotland. For most of the circuit the defences comprise an inner wall about 3m in thickness with a roughly concentric outer rampart, but while the wall may have continued along the lip of the escarpment falling away to the bottom of the valley on the SE, little trace of it survives there today, and of the outer nothing is visible. The RCAHMS investigators who drew up the description in 1959 suggested that the intermittent character of a ditch that accompanies the outer rampart over short distances on the NW and SW respectively indicated that this outer work was unfinished, but this is a tenuous argument for a rampart that is apparently continuous in sectors where there is no evidence of any ditch. Entrances pierce both lines of defence on the E and SW respectively, the latter set in a shallow re-entrant with a well-worn hollow mounting the slope into the interior. Apart from the round-houses within the interior, the investigators also identified a faint scarp or band of rubble, which they thought might mark the course of an earlier perimeter on the hill top; enclosing about 1ha, this would still be an unusually large enclosure in the area, but its true character can only be resolved by excavation.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 16 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3654
Sbc Note
Visibility: This is an upstanding earthwork or monument.
Information from Scottish Borders Council
