Catrail

NT50SW 10 from 5385 0265 to 5000 0365. LIN 2.

The Object Name Book of the Ordnance Survey describes the 'Catrail or Picts' Work Ditch' as 'The remains of a trenched fortification which runs through the Counties of Roxburgh and Selkirk. At several places the ditch which has been of considerable depth can still be distinctly ?(seen) on the south side. In some districts the fortification is known as the Picts work ditch, but in this County it is well known as the Catrail a name which is said in British to signify the Dividing Fence.

Name Book 1861

Hobkirk Parish: The written accounts of the Catrail, including Craw's of 1923, and also a plan prepared in 1857-8 (RCAHMS 1956), agree with the OS map in placing its SE end on the left bank of Robert's Linn, about 120 yds below the road-bridge. This ground has been very much disturbed by surface drains and the record has been considerably obscured, but when the herbage is in a suitable state, positive traces of the work can be seen connecting a ditch-like hollow on the bank of the Linn with another on the Flosh Burn, 130 yds distant across the intervening tongue of land. This arrangement indicates that the line that the Catrail was designed to mark out in its course to the W, did not turn N at this point to run down the beds of the Flosh and Lang Burns to the Slitrig Water but ascended Robert's Linn for a certain distance, perhaps to the watershed, so as to include the ground on the E side of the valley; and this suggestion is in keeping with local conditions, as the Flosh Burn forms no positive line of division between the lands on the right and left banks. Again, if the intention was not to carry the boundary forward up the line of Robert's Linn, it is difficult to see why the earthwork should have been made to cross the Flosh Burn at all, as the area that it actually enclosed between the two streams is itself of negligible size. On the other hand, the foregoing argument should not be regarded as supporting the theory held by the older antiquaries, which was that the Catrail ran on for another six miles in this direction and ended on Peel Fell. For this no evidence has been found, as no earthworks branch off the upper part of Robert's Linn or the hanging valley at its head; and it is clear that what were formerly held to be parts of an extended Catrail, and are in fact so marked on the OS map, are actually in one case (RCAHMS 1956, No.129) a monument of a completely different type and in others (RCAHMS 1956, Nos. 118, 119 and pp 474f) the remains of old roads. Attention is drawn to these errors in the descriptions of the remains in question.

Cavers Parish: From the Flosh Burn the Catrail runs very slightly S of W for a mile and a quarter; it can be followed easily enough for most of this distance, although its condition is nowhere good and it becomes almost invisible where the ground is flat and mossy. At one point the ditch was found to be 10ft wide and the bank, which was of earth and small stones, was spread to 11ft and stood about 2ft high above the ditch bottom; at another point the ditch was 7ft wide and the bank 12ft to 13ft thick and 4ft high above the ditch bottom. The bank is on the N side of the ditch, and a slight spoil-bank was noted on the opposite side in one section. The tracks of a drove-road override the work near NT 530 025, and W of the railway the ditch has been made use of in a system of surface drainage. On the flat summit between the railway and the Harwood Burn all traces are lost in a peat-moss. When the work again becomes visible at the Harwood Burn, it is swinging slightly northwards, and for more than a mile - as far as the Langside Burn - its course lies NW by W. The remains continue to be fragmentary to beyond Drowning Sike; on King's Rig the ditch is plain, but there is little left of the bank. It is noticeable that the ground adjoining the part of the Catrail so far described has been much more intensively utilised in the past than at present. Marks of cultivation, perhaps not very old, are plentiful on the better-drained land, and the outline of a very large circular enclosure, no doubt a fold for sheep, was shown up by a low winter sun on the hillside between the Catrail and Long Sike. An old road (RCAHMS 1956, No.181) runs up the right bank of the Harwood Burn and there is a drovers' stance on the hillside a short distance away to the N. The valley of the King's Sike has also been cultivated and the heavy surface-drainage contributes further to the deterioration of the earthwork.

As it mounts the lower slope of Hat Knowe from King's Sike the Catrail is traversed by the old road (RCAHMS 1956, No.181) which crosses the sike a short distance higher up. On Hat Knowe (NT 507 031) the work is rather better preserved; the ditch was found to be 9ft wide and 2ft deep and the bank, which was of earth and small stones, was 11ft thick. The work is clearly marked from here to a small unmarked burn at a point about 100yds S of the 'sheepfold' standing on the right bank of the Langside Burn; beyond this point it runs through ground which has been ploughed, and for the final 80yds of this stretch, as marked on the OS map, it has been partially obliterated.

RCAHMS 1956

Eleven sections and two horizontal areas were opened over the length of this bank and ditch within the Stennishope forestry plantation for the purpose of examining the morphology of the monument and obtaining samples of buried soils, buried soil profiles and ditch sediments for dating analysis. The bank which had been placed on the N side of the ditch was found to be of single phase construction, earth built and with a core or foundation of turfs. The ditch in some places had been recut and the upcast material from it dumped on the S side in discrete piles. In the central sector the bank was constructed of quarried stone rubble from the rock-cut ditch.

P Strong 1984

NT 5385 0262 to NT 5005 0365. This is the largest continuous portion of the true Catrail. The earthwork runs W from the mouth of Robert Linn (NT 5385 0262) across the N ridge of Leap Hill (NT 5208 0250) to the W/NW as far as the Langside Burn (NT 5005 0365), a distance of c.4km. It crosses 11 small burns flowing N into the Slitrig Water and the spurs and ridges between, irrespective of contour. It is clearly visible, but in poor condition. On steep slopes, its character has been degraded by natural surface drainage and on the more level ridge tops it has been obscured by the accumulation of peat.

It consists of a low, rounded bank with a ditch, generally the more noticeable feature, on the uphill side. Today, it rarely exceeds an overall width of 6m and height of 0.5m. RCAHMS notes a counterscarp bank in one place, which has vanished since 1945, but generally the work is not badly affected by human activity.

Information from J Milln, in J Barber 1999.

This section of the Catrail is visible on vertical air photographs (106G/UK 433, 3292-3293, flown 24 June 1945) as a continuous earthwork running E from the now disused railway (NT50SW 11.00) to the Flosh Burn. The section to the W of the railway is less visible on the photographs.

Information from RCAHMS (DE), December 2006