Rink Hill
Building(S) (Post Medieval), Fort (Prehistoric), Settlement (Prehistoric)
Site Name Rink Hill
Classification Building(S) (Post Medieval), Fort (Prehistoric), Settlement (Prehistoric)
Canmore ID 54448
Site Number NT43SE 7
NGR NT 4802 3270
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/54448
- Council Scottish Borders, The
- Parish Caddonfoot
- Former Region Borders
- Former District Ettrick And Lauderdale
- Former County Selkirkshire
NT43SE 7 4802 3270
See also NT43SE 9.
(NT 4802 3270) Fort (NR)
OS 6" map (1971)
The striking remains of this fort lie for the most part in a walled plantation on the summit of Rink Hill at a height of 640ft OD.
The earliest work on the site appears to have been an oval fort or settlement measuring some 500ft by 300ft within a single rampart, which is now represented only by a ploughed-out fragment lying W of the plantation wall.
The next structural phase was an almost circular enclosure about 200 ft in diameter, formed by two heavy concentric ramparts, with a median ditch. The ruin of a massive stone wall lies on the inner rampart, but it is impossible to tell whether this is a contemporary feature or whether it represents a third structural phase.
The recorded relics from the site comprise pieces of 'coarse earthenware' (presumably native pottery), a whorl, a Roman bronze 'head-stud' brooch of Colchester type (1st to early 2nd century), picked up on the W side of the fort in 1929. The upper stones of two rotary querns were found amongst the debris of wall A by the RCAHMS. These, together with the brooch, are now in the NMAS.
A portion of a saddle-quern was found among the debris in the SE sector of the ditch in 1952. A (?) Roman penannular brooch has also come from this site.
The ruinous foundations of several rectangular buildings which lie immediately E of the fort are probably of comparatively recent date.
RCAHMS 1957, visited 1950; R W Feachem 1963; A S Robertson 1970; Proc Soc Antiq Scot 1912, 1929
This fort is as described above, but, of the outer rampart on the W, only a short length of ploughed down scarp remains N of a field dyke.
Visited by OS (WDJ) 18 January 1961.
Note (17 August 2014 - 18 October 2016)
This fort is situated immediately E of the highest point of Rink Hill, occupying a shoulder position on the SE of the broader summit area overlooking the confluence of the River Tweed and the Ettrick Water. The main defences comprise a massively constructed inner wall encircled by a ditch with an outer rampart, which enclose a slightly oval area measuring about 65m from E to W by 55m transversely (0.28ha). The inner wall, which is up to 4.2m in thickness, is reduced to a massive mound of rubble about 1.8m in internal height, but the line of the outer face is intermittently visible round the whole circuit, and the inner face at one point on the NE; in 1950 RCAHMS investigators also identified on the S a second line of outer facing in the core, suggesting that the wall represented several periods of construction. Apart from a short length of wall overlying rubble of the inner wall on the N, which is probably associated with the foundations of three rectangular buildings outside the entrance on the E, the interior is featureless. The foundations outside the entrance were misinterpreted by the first OS surveyors as elements of the outer defences (Selkirk 1863, sheet 8.9), but they also identified what is almost certainly an earlier enclosure on the site, extending in a wider arc around the W flank, though it is now largely ploughed out and known only from a parchmark about 2m broad on aerial photographs. In 1950 the RCAHMS investigators suggested that its line took up the scarp overlain by the southern of the foundations outside the entrance, in which case it is oval on plan and measures about 135m from ENE to WSW by 85m transversely (0.9ha) within its bank and ditch.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC1539
Sbc Note
Visibility: This is an upstanding earthwork or monument.
Information from Scottish Borders Council
