Black Castle, Newlands

Round the summit of a hillock, just inside the south-east end of the strip of plantation known as the Black Castle Woods, about 5/8 mile west of Newlands and at an elevation of 900 feet above sea-level, is the fort known as the “Black Castle”. It is almost circular in outline (fig. 69 [plan]) and measures 383 feet in length by 342 feet in breadth inside, the longer axes running north-west and south-east. The inner defence is formed by a high stone wall over-grown with grass, 18 feet broad at base and rising 5 ½ feet above the inner level and 10 feet above the bottom of a ditch outside, which now is 18 feet broad and 1 ½ to 4 ½ feet deep on the counterscarp. An outer wall 7 feet broad at the foundation and feet high is erected about 8 feet from the edge of the counterscarp, but for some distance round the north-east arc it is placed on the edge of the ditch. Part of the outer wall on the south-west flank appears on the edge of afield outside the stone dyke which encloses the plantation at this place, and a portion of it has been destroyed in building the dyke. Near the centre of the west arc and in the south arc broad gaps 15 feet wide occur in the inner wall, opposite which the ditch has not been excavated or has been filled up. The outer wall having been destroyed at these places, itis impossible to say definitely if they had been entrances, but this seems improbable, as some of the foundation stones of the inner wall are still in situ in these gaps. To the south-east, what looks like an entrance passage some 10 feet wide with a slight wall on either side 2 ½ feet high, extends for a distance of 42 feet outwards from the edge of the counterscarp of the ditch and through the outer wall, which recurves into the walls of the passage on either side, but this roadway is not carried over the ditch or through the inner wall. An entrance may have existed at the north-north-west corner, where is a disused quarry. Immediately to the south-east of the quarry, inside the fort, there is an oval depression, apparently surrounded by a stone wall, measuring 45 feet from east to west and 30 feet from north to south.

RCAHMS 1924, visited 17 May 1913.

Fort, ‘Black Castle’, Newlands, (Inventory No. 50).

The Inventory plan is inaccurate as there are only two ramparts (as stated in the text) and not three. The inner rampart has been a massive affair consisting of a stone wall possible, though not certainly, erected on the base of an upcast mound, as was suspected at the Rink fort, Selkirkshire [NT43SE 7]. It is exactly the same as the inner rampart at Kidlaw (Inventory No. 259) [NT56SW 1], so that the wall at the latter site cannot be assumed to belong necessarily to the homestead period. The outer rampart appears to be merely an upcast mound. Both the W and the S entrances are probably genuine – the stones in the gamps being tumble and the ditch ending neatly on either side of the each gap. The interior has probably been ploughed in the past before the site was planted, and nothing is now visible. The oval depression mentioned in the Inventory was choked with fallen trees on the date of visit but it is certainly not a stone-walled hut.

The fort is clearly of early Iron Age date, and belongs to the Kidlaw-Blackchester group.

Visited by RCAHMS (KAS) 2 June 1954.

This fort is situated on the NW end of the elongated summit of a hill on the SW side of the B6355 public road at the foot of the Lammermuir escarpment. Oval on plan, it measures 117m from NW to SE by 104m transversely (1ha) within a rampart and ditch accompanied by a counterscarp bank. The inner rampart is spread some 5m thick and stand up to 1.6m high internally, and when revisited in 1954 by RCAHMS investigators they considered that it was the remains of a wall, possibly erected on an earlier bank. The ditch is up to 5m in breadth by 1.2m deep, while the slighter counterscarp bank is about 2m in thickness by 0.4m in height. Causeways across the ditch indicate the positions of original entrances on the S and WSW, while a gap in the inner rampart on the E appears to be a later break; a quarry has also been driven through the defences on the NW. Apart from a circular depression noted adjacent to the quarry, the interior is featureless. Probably following the abandonment of the defences, the SE quarter of the perimeter was incorporated into the line of a linear boundary, the stubs of the ditches of which can be seen cutting through the counterscarp bank on the E and SSE; at the latter, the ditch is flanked by banks on either lip, while in the fields to the NE and S the line of the ditch can be traced in lines of pits revealed by cropmarks.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 09 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3824

The location, classification and period of this site have been reviewed.