Innerwick Castle

Cropmarks have revealed that the rocky promontory occupied by Innerwick Castle, which juts out ESE into a meander of the Thornton Burn, formed the focus for a semicircular arc of defences barring access from the N and W quarters. No fewr than five ditches are visible on the aerial photographs, and though none is particularly well-defined, they measure between 2m and 6m in breadth and form a belt apparently some 40m deep. The variation in the breadth of the ditches, in which the innermost is the narrowest and the outermost is the broadest, the other three averaging about 4m in breadth, may indicate that they are not an unitary scheme, but represent several periods of construction. Indeed, photographs taken in 1988 hint that on the NNW the outermost ditch is a conflation of two features which are otherwise lost in the diffuse markings recorded in other years. Be that as it may, the arc of the relatively narrow innermost ditch encloses an area measuring just short of 100m from NE to SW along the edge of the escarpment dropping down to the Thornton Burn, by 60m transversely from the lip of the massive rock-cut ditch cutting across the promontory in front of the stone castle, an area of about 0.42ha; including the castle, the interior increases to about 0.48ha. No entrance causeways are visible crossing the ditch system, but the outer ditches cut in more tightly as they approach the edge of the field on the SW, halving the overall breadth of the ditch-system and probably indicating the position of an entrance way approaching along the lip of the escarpment; a similar feature may occur on the NE, but the cropmarks are even more diffuse here. Apart from the castle, the only features visible within the interior are several narrow ditches on the NE. The castle was probably built no earlier than the beginning of the 15th century and there is no particular reason to believe that these ploughed out defences are part of a medieval fortification rather than an earlier fort.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 10 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3928