Woodhouse Hill

This fort is situated on the rocky hillock forming the summit of Woodhouse Hill, which forms the NE spur of the higher ground to the SW. The ground falls away particularly steeply to either side of the fort, on the W into a gully and on the E down into the Manor valley, despite which there is extensive evidence of post-medieval cultivation before the area was put to trees in the 19th century. The defences of the fort are evidently complex and almost certainly represent several periods of construction, the inner enclosure on the summit of the hillock representing the latest. Roughly oval on plan, this measures 61m from NNE to SSW by 30m transversely (0.15ha) within a wall reduced to a mound of rubble and contains five circular rock-cut house-platforms. The entrance is on the E, and is unusual, the N side turning deeply into the interior to terminate in a mound of rubble opposite a shallow inturn with a similar mound of rubble on the S; in doing so, the visitor's right side is exposed, particularly if approaching from the N of two gaps in the outer rampart on this side. The RCAHMS investigators drawing up a plan in 1962 suggested that the expanded mounds of rubble at the terminals might hide gate-towers, but it is more probable that the wall merely increased in height as it approached the gateway, and in any case differential preservation of the remains may also have played some part in their appearance. Partly because of later robbing and disturbance, the relationship of this inner enclosure to the second rampart, which shares its line on the NNE, is ambiguous, but the second and third ramparts may have been elements of an essentially bivallate scheme enclosing a rather larger area of about 0.27ha against a single rampart extending along the lip of the slope on the ESE. There are entrances at the junctions of the bivallate defences with this single line on both the NNE and SSE, and at both the outer rampart on the W side of the gap appears to swing inwards to unite with its neighbour and form one side of the entrance way; while at the NNE entrance this exposes the visitor's right side, at the SSE gap it is the left side. Both these entrances also give access to the entrance into the inner enclosure. An additional rampart can also be seen at the foot of the slope on the W, where all told four lines of defence can be seen, but the character of this outer work is uncertain. Northwards it peters out, only for its line to be taken up by what the RCAHMS investigators termed a marker trench, while at its S end it is conflated with a bank and ditch on a rather different and much straighter line. Recognising the awkwardness of the junction, the RCAHMS investigators suggested this S sector was perhaps an independent linear earthwork barring access from the S, but there are also a series of successive agricultural enclosures on the hillside to the W, probably largely of post-medieval date, and the investigators probably underestimated the extent of this later activity and its impact on the remains of the fort, so much so it is difficult to be confident that the supposed marker trench is associated with the defences of the fort.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 20 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3650

Visibility: This is an upstanding earthwork or monument.

Information from Scottish Borders Council