Ewieside Hill

49. Fort, Ewieside Hill.

About 1 ¼ miles south of Cockburnspath, at the eastern extremity of the summit of Ewieside Hill, and at an elevation of some 800 feet above the sea, is an irregular circular enclosure (fig. 20) somewhat faceted on its southern arc measuring in its greatest interior diameter some 300 feet. It is surrounded by three concentric ramparts with two intervening trenches and a third trench on the outside. The defences from the crest of the inner rampart to the top of the counterscarp of the outermost trench measure 60 feet across (at the west side). The innermost trench has a breadth of 23 feet, the intermediate one 20 feet, and the outermost 17 feet. The innermost rampart slightly dominates the middle one: both from4 feet to 4 feet 6 inches high on the inner side; the outermost mound is somewhat less. This appears to be formed of earth and stone. The original entrance has been from the north-west; one from the north-east is probably modern. Some 12 feet from its termination, on either side of the entrance, the inner rampart swings outward to meet the middle rampart and closes the ends of the inner ditch, the ends of the outer ditch remaining open. The entrance to the interior appears to have been narrow, but the growth of heather obscures the details. About 16 feet to the west of the entrance a bank, some 6 feet across, forms a traverse across the inner trench. The defences are well preserved, excepting one portion, lying in a field to the south, which has been almost obliterated by cultivation. The interior on the moor is overgrown with heather. To the north of the fort, along the edge of the steep bank descending to the low ground, runs an earthen mound for some 280 yards, 9 feet in width, 1 1/2 feet high on the south side, and 3 1/2 feet on the north (or lower) side. The course of the mound is rather straighter than is usual in early works of this character.

RCAHMS 1915, visited 3 November 1908.

OS Map: Ber., iv. NW.

This site was included within the RCAHMS Marginal Land Survey (1950-1962), an unpublished rescue project. Site descriptions, organised by county, are available to view online - see the searchable PDF in 'Digital Items'. These vary from short notes, to lengthy and full descriptions. Contemporary plane-table surveys and inked drawings, where available, can be viewed online in most cases - see 'Digital Images'. The original typecripts, notebooks and drawings can also be viewed in the RCAHMS search room.

Information from RCAHMS (GFG) 19 July 2013.

NT 7770 6883 and NT 7829 6863 A 10% trial trenching evaluation (8322m2) of the Phase 1 evaluation area was carried out prior to a quarry extension. In addition, a further 4003m2 was stripped as an open-area. A shallow ditch feature identified in Trenches 5 and 7 was probably caused by recent

agricultural practices.

The Phase 2 works consisted of a geophysical survey and 5% evaluation adjacent to the SM of Ewieside Hillfort and a 10% evaluation of the remainder of the extension area. No finds or features of archaeological significance were recorded. This work was undertaken February – March 2016.

Archive: NRHE (intended). Report: NRHE and SMR

Funder: AMS Associates Ltd on behalf of Kinegar Quarries Ltd

Samantha Hickman and Ian Suddaby – CFA Archaeology Ltd

(Source: DES, Volume 17)

This fort or fortified settlement is situated on the E end of the summit of Ewieside Hill, two thirds of it surviving as upstanding earthworks and the southern third ploughed down since the 19th century and now known only from cropmarks of the dithces. roughly circular on plan, the interior measures 82m from E to W across the upstanding portion, and in their final phase the defences comprise three boulder-faced ramparts and ditches. Individually neither are particularly large, the innermost being the largest and forming a bank spread 4.5m in thickness by 0.9m in height, while the inner of the ditches, which is also the most clearly defined, is no more than 2.6m in breadth by 0.5m in depth. Close examination, however, suggests that they represent at least two successive schemes, in which the outermost was added to an original enclosure of two ramparts with a medial ditch to create a belt some 17m deep. The evidence of this phasing may be observed at the entrance on the NW, where the innermost and second rampart return and unite around the terminals of the ditch, and the gap 9m wide between the returns has been blocked by the insertion of a bank at the outer end of the passage and the addition of the third rampart, though a narrow gap for access has been broken through them since. A new entrance was constructed on the NE, and possibly a second in the ploughed down sector on the SW. In contrast to the inner ditch, the ditches flanking the outermost rampart appear to be a series of discontinuous pits. in 1979 RCAHMS investigators noted a stony spine in some places on the ramparts and speculated that this was possibly the packing of palisades set in their crests. An internal quarry scoop was also visible immediately within the inner rampart and at that time traces of a ring-ditch house could be seen in the hollow near the NW entrance, with a second lying immediately to its E, while elsewhere there were traces of a third; unfortunately, the interior has been used as a feeding station more recently and these fugitive traces are likely to have been obliterated. The only other feature of note is that the SW terminal of the inner ditch at the original entrance on the NW has been utilised more recently to create what is either a small bothie or a pen.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 21 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC4063

Visibility: This is an upstanding earthwork or monument.

Information from Scottish Borders Council