Hownam Rings

Over 300m high, Hownam Rings command the ridge over which a track known as 'The Street' passes from Hownam, along the high plateau and across the Border to Upper Coquet Dale. The site is naturally protected on three sides, but is easily accessible along this ridge.

Excavation has identified at least four phases of occupation, the last dating from the late 3rd century AD and comprising an undefended settlement of circular stone-built houses and a roughly rectangular enclosure containing a single stone-walled house. This settlement lies both within and upon the abandoned ramparts of the previous phase.

Whilst it is uncertain when the triple ramparts were abandoned, they had been built perhaps in response to such new weapons as slings or chariots. They represent a major remodelling of an earlier 3.6m thick stone wall, faced either side with stone blocks and infilled with rubble. Within the entrance to this single wall, blocked up when replaced, a quem was found,dated to the late 1st century AD.

The first phase, no longer identifiable on the ground, was a simple palisaded enclosure which had been reconstructed very soon after completion on almost the same line. Originally thought to date to the 1st or 2nd century BC, radiocarbon tests now suggest these first phases to be 6th or 7th century BC-giving a total occupation span of some 700-800 years.

'The Shearers' (NT 790192-791192), a line of 28 stones, cross the plateau some 82m south-east of the fort. Eleven of them are exposed at turf-level. Said by some to be standing stones, they are more likely the 'grounders' of an ancient field-dyke probably erected during the occupation of the fort. Such field dykes, in association with late-Roman/early-Anglian homesteads, survive at Crock Cleuch, about 5km west-south-west (NT 833176).

Information from 'Exploring Scotland's Heritage: Lothian and Borders', (1985).

The fort known as Hownam Rings, situated on the local summit of the NW spur of Windy Law, was the scene of excavations by Mrs C M Piggott in 1948 that played a major role in the evolution of hillfort studies in Scotland in the 1950s and 60s, giving rise to the much quoted Hownam sequence in which palisaded enclosures were successively replaced by univallate and multivallate defences, before being superseded by Roman Iron Age settlements built across derelict ramparts. The defences of Hownam Rings are best preserved on the W flank, comprising no fewer than three ramparts with shallow external ditches or quarried terraces, the outer with a counterscarp bank, but elsewhere they are evidently overlain by the remains of a later settlement dating from the Roman Iron Age or late Iron Age; the latter is made up of a series of stone founded round-houses disposed around scooped yards and, on the E, a rectilinear enclosure. On plan, at least, the greater part of this settlement lies within a walled enclosure, which gives every appearance of also overlying the defences, but was itself superseded by the rectilinear enclosure on the E. While the latter relationship is secure enough, the sequence identified in the excavations placed the walled enclosure prior to the multivallate defences, enclosing a roughly oval area measuring 90m from E to W by 75m transversely (0.5ha). While not disputing the detailed observations made in individual trenches, this sequence cannot be correct and with hindsight diverse structural components from different periods have probably been conflated to create the circuit of the supposed univallate phase. Likewise, the relationship of the two palisade trenches that are supposed to form the earliest phases of the sequence here is far from clear, Supposedly they are overlain by the ramparts of the multivallate phase, but in practice they were found only in an area where the ramparts had been ploughed down by the Roman Iron Age and their relationships to these defences is by no means secure. While these stratigraphic relationships cannot be resolved without further excavation, there is no doubting the presence of an oval multivallate fort at Hownam Rings, probably measuring internally about 90m from E to W, but no more than 60m transversely (0.45ha); there was an entrance on the SSW, probably forming part of an entrance way approaching obliquely to expose the visitor's left side. Finds from the excavations include a range of coarse stone tools and coarse pottery and an iron knife, while fragments of Roman pottery show that the late Iron Age settlement was certainly occupied into the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 19 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3401

Visibility: This is an upstanding earthwork or monument.

Information from Scottish Borders Council