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Broom Hill
Fort (Prehistoric), Plantation Bank (Post Medieval), Rig And Furrow (Medieval) - (Post Medieval)
Site Name Broom Hill
Classification Fort (Prehistoric), Plantation Bank (Post Medieval), Rig And Furrow (Medieval) - (Post Medieval)
Alternative Name(s) Cacrabank Hill; Broomhill
Canmore ID 66942
Site Number NY19SE 3
NGR NY 15407 91613
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/66942
- Council Dumfries And Galloway
- Parish Hutton And Corrie
- Former Region Dumfries And Galloway
- Former District Annandale And Eskdale
- Former County Dumfries-shire
NY19SE 3 1540 9161.
(NY 1540 9161) Fort (NR)
OS 6" map, (1958)
Virtually a circular fort 170' in diameter. Defences where best preserved consist of a massive rampart with 27' wide outer ditch. Entrance in N. (R W Feachem 1956) A semi-lunar area on the W side is in part secondary.
RCAHMS 1920.
This fort is another typical example of a type widely spread in Dumfriesshire. Virtually circular, with a diameter of 170 ft (51.8m), where best preserved the defences consist of a very heavy and massive rampart with a ditch 27 ft (8.2m) wide outside it. The entrance is in the W.
R W Feachem 1963.
On the summit of Broom Hill are the remains of a fort and enclosure. The fort consists of a 55m stretch of an earth-and-stone rampart and ditch cutting off a neck of land whose original dimensions are lost. The entrance is near the N end of the defences.
This rampart is totally enclosed by a later oval enclosure measuring internally 57m N-S by 81m transversely between a bank up to 2.0m high externally in the SE. There is no break for an entrance and the interior is featureless. Outside the enclosure bank on the NW a gully runs parallel to the bank. The purpose of this enclosure is not clear. While it cannot be positively identified as a settlement it is certainly of greater proportions than a tree ring.
Resurveyed at 1:2500.
Visited by OS (D W R) 30 March 1972
This fort appears to be of at least two phases which are identifiable as a curving N-S rampart and ditch which is totally enclosed by a sub-oval bank measuring internally 81.0m E-W by 57.0m.
The univallate work is 60.0m long and although it crosses the level top of the hillock it does not enclose an easily defensible area because there is much dead ground. The rampart is reasonably strong being 2.0m high, the ditch is 0.9m deep and there is a simple entrance near the north end.
The contour-following enclosure has a bank up to 1.6m high externally and 0.6m high internally with the silted remains of a contiguous inner ditch (possibly a quarry ditch) and slight evidence of an external ditch at both the east and west ends. A field bank skirts the northern edge of the work. There is no trace of a gap in the enclosure bank and the interior is featureless.
The enclosure bank (and inner ditch) overlies the rampart at its northerly end, but the rampart appears to overlie the enclosure bank at its southerly end.
The precise date and classification of this work is not clear but it may have been a fort and/or settlement.
Surveyed at 1:2500.
Visited by OS (M J F) 27 September 1978.
Fort and Enclosure [NR]
OS 1:10,000 map, 1982.
Measured Survey (10 March 1991)
RCAHMS surveyed the fort at Broom Hill on 10 March 1991 with plane-table and self-reducing alidade at a scale of 1:500. The plan was redrawn in ink and published at a scale of 1:1000 (RCAHMS 1997, Fig. 128).
Field Visit (10 March 1991)
NY 1540 9161 NY19SE 3
This fort lies on the summit of Broom Hill, a low rise on an E-facing spur of Cacrabank Hill, and the earthworks comprise two phases of fortification overlain by a plantation enclosure and a later plantation bank.
The earlier phase is a large oval fort that has measured approximately 80m from E to W by about 52m within at least two ramparts with external ditches. Only fragments of these defences are visible at the W end of the fort, where they have largely been levelled by ploughing. Elsewhere, the line of the inner rampart has probably followed the crest of the natural slope, but intensive ploughing in the medieval period (the interior bears traces of ridging) followed by the construction of the oval plantation enclosure and the later plantation bank, has effectively masked all traces of the earliest defences.
The second phase of fortification saw a reduction in the size of the fort to about 45m from E to W by about 52m transversely, by a rampart and ditch drawn across the W side of the summit of the hill. The grass-grown rampart measures up to 9m in thickness and 1.5m in height, and is fronted by a ditch up to 6m broad and 0.6m deep. An entrance, about 4m wide, is situated towards the N end of this well-preserved length of rampart.
Following a period of intensive rig-and-furrow cultivation, which effectively flattened all but the W end of the second-phase defences, the summit of the hill was taken into an oval enclosure, probably for a plantation. It measures about 84m from E to W by 54m transversely within a distinctive flat-topped bank (measuring about 2.5m in thickness and 0.3m in height) which has been formed from material derived from a shallow internal ditch (1.5m in width and 0.3m in depth). Fragments of the later plantation bank, which measures about 1.5m in thickness and 0.3m in height, can also be identified on the N,W and S.
Visited by RCAHMS (JRS, SMF), 10 March 1991.
Listed as fort.
RCAHMS 1997.
Note (13 June 2014 - 18 October 2016)
This fort is situated on the summit of Broom Hill, which is itself a spur of Cacrabank Hill. The defences display a complex history of construction, in which an oval fort was later remodelled with a massive earthen rampart with an external ditch, which was built across the interior from NNE to SSW. Subsequently, during the post-medieval period, the defences of the oval fort were first ploughed down with rig-and-furrow and then obscured by the construction of a substantial plantation bank roughly following the line of its inner rampart, and more recently still the defences on the W have been further reduced by pasture improvement outside the old plantation. In its first phase, the interior of the fort measured about 80m from E to W by 52m transversely (0.37ha), and the rampart and external ditch masked by the plantation bank, which presents an external scarp up to 1.6m in height, was supplemented around the western half of the circuit by an outer rampart and ditch, though these are heavily ploughed down and difficult to follow on the ground. In its second phase, the interior was reduced to a D-shaped area measuring 52m along the chord formed by the new rampart by 45m transversely (0.23ha); this rampart is up to 9m in thickness by 1.5m in height, and is accompanied by an external ditch 6m in breadth by 0.6m in depth. A well-defined gap towards the N end of the new rampart is evidently the entrance in the second phase, but the position of the entrance in the earlier configuration of the defences is unknown.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC0984
