Satellite Imagery
Satellite Imagery
HER: Aberdeenshire Historic Environment Record NJ62SW0003 (None)
NMR: NJ 62 SW 3 (18212)
SM: 5316
NGR: NJ 6495 2450
X: 364950 Y: 824500 (OSGB36)
This large enclosure is situated in a clearing on the gently rounded summit of a low hill enclosed within the forestry plantations along the N flank of the Bennachie hills. Where its perimeter can be traced through the rank heather and dense thickets of gorse and whins, it appears as a low stony bank spread 4.5m in thickness and no more than 0.5m in height, which has been constructed with material grubbed up from a shallow internal quarry about 5m in breadth to enclose an oval area measuring about 195m from ENE to WSW by 165m transversely (2.7). A gap in the bank on the N is approached by a hollowed trackway, but when most recently surveyed by RCAHMS, the investigators could detect little trace of the 56 hut-circles identified on a plan drawn up in 1957 during the RCAHMS Survey of Marginal Lands.
Citizen Science: ✗
Reliability of Data: Confirmed
Reliability of Interpretation: Confirmed
X: -287587 Y: 7823703 (EPSG: 3857)
Longitude: -2.5834405156781024 Latitude: 57.30979306081675 (EPSG:4326)
Country: Scotland
Current County or Unitary Authority: Aberdeenshire
Historic County: Aberdeenshire
Current Parish/Community/Council/Townland: Premnay
None
| Extant | ✓ |
| Cropmark | ✗ |
| Likely Destroyed | ✗ |
A clearing in forestry but heavily overgrown with gorse and whins
| Woodland | ✗ |
| Commercial Forestry Plantation | ✗ |
| Parkland | ✗ |
| Pasture (Grazing) | ✗ |
| Arable | ✗ |
| Scrub/Bracken | ✓ |
| Bare Outcrop | ✗ |
| Heather/Moorland | ✗ |
| Heath | ✗ |
| Built-up | ✗ |
| Coastal Grassland | ✗ |
| Other | ✗ |
None
| Contour Fort | ✓ |
| Partial Contour Fort | ✗ |
| Promontory Fort | ✗ |
| Hillslope Fort | ✗ |
| Level Terrain Fort | ✗ |
| Marsh Fort | ✗ |
| Multiple Enclosure Fort | ✗ |
| Hilltop | ✓ |
| Coastal Promontory | ✗ |
| Inland Promontory | ✗ |
| Valley Bottom | ✗ |
| Knoll/Hillock/Outcrop | ✗ |
| Ridge | ✗ |
| Cliff/Plateau-edge/Scarp | ✗ |
| Hillslope | ✗ |
| Lowland | ✗ |
| Spur | ✗ |
Dominant Topographic Feature: None
| North | ✗ |
| Northeast | ✗ |
| East | ✗ |
| Southeast | ✗ |
| South | ✗ |
| Southwest | ✗ |
| West | ✗ |
| Northwest | ✗ |
| Level | ✓ |
Altitude: 254.0m
N/A
In the absence of excavation, there are neither stratified artefacts nor radiocarbon dates to provide a chronology for the defences.
Reliability: D - None
| Pre 1200BC | ✗ |
| 1200BC - 800BC | ✗ |
| 800BC - 400BC | ✗ |
| 400BC - AD50 | ✗ |
| AD50 - AD400 | ✗ |
| AD400 - AD 800 | ✗ |
| Post AD800 | ✗ |
| Unknown | ✓ |
| Pre Hillfort: | None |
| Post Hillfort: | None |
Aberdeenshire Council and RCAHMS hold a range of oblique aerial photographs of the site, where the vegetation conditions have changed dramatically between visits.
| 1st Identified Map Depiction (1867): | Annotated Camp on the 1st edition OS 25-inch map (Aberdeenshire 1870, sheet 44.15; Name Book, Aberdeenshire, No. 75, p 45) |
| 1st Identified Written Reference (1883): | Notes (Yeats 1883) |
| Other (1943): | Description by Angus Graham and Gordon Childe for the RCAHMS wartime Emergency Surveys |
| Earthwork Survey (1957): | Plan and description for RCAHMS Survey of Marginal Lands (RCAHMS ABD 9/1-2 & DP147348-9) |
| Other (1973): | Resurveyed at 1:2500 by the OS |
| Other (1977): | Surveyed at 1:10,000 by the OS |
| Other (1981): | Visited by the Hill-Fort Study Group |
| Other (1992): | Scheduled |
| Earthwork Survey (1996): | Plan and description by RCAHMS (DC 44612; Halliday 2007, 99 fig 6.25, 103) |
While the 1st edition OS 25-inch map (Aberdeenshire 1870, shhet 44.15) shows one ring-bank and two tumuli, in 1943 Angus Graham reported 'perhaps up to two dozen' features that he considered to be the remains of hut-circles, some of which were platformed into the slope, and three small cairns. On a subsequent visit after heather burning he recognised many more, and the plan drawn up by Richard Feachem in 1957, when only the W third was obscured by deep heather, shows no less than 56, and a single rectangle, though he was circumspect in his description of their precise character and found it hard to believe that the sparse circles were the footings of walls. The most recent survey, carried out by RCAHMS concentrated on cleared areas of the rank vegetation where there the ground surface had been laid bare, but could detect no convincing examples.
None
| None | ✓ |
| Spring | ✗ |
| Stream | ✗ |
| Pool | ✗ |
| Flush | ✗ |
| Well | ✗ |
| Other | ✗ |
Internal quarry to rear of the perimeter
| No Known Features | ✗ |
| Round Stone Structures | ✗ |
| Rectangular Stone Structures | ✗ |
| Curvilinear Platforms | ✗ |
| Other Roundhouse Evidence | ✗ |
| Pits | ✗ |
| Quarry Hollows | ✓ |
| Other | ✗ |
None
| No Known Excavation | ✓ |
| Pits | ✗ |
| Postholes | ✗ |
| Roundhouses | ✗ |
| Rectangular Structures | ✗ |
| Roads/Tracks | ✗ |
| Quarry Hollows | ✗ |
| Other | ✗ |
| Nothing Found | ✗ |
None
| No Known Geophysics | ✓ |
| Pits | ✗ |
| Roundhouses | ✗ |
| Rectangular Structures | ✗ |
| Roads/Tracks | ✗ |
| Quarry Hollows | ✗ |
| Other | ✗ |
| Nothing Found | ✗ |
None
| No Known Finds | ✓ |
| Pottery | ✗ |
| Metal | ✗ |
| Metalworking | ✗ |
| Human Bones | ✗ |
| Animal Bones | ✗ |
| Lithics | ✗ |
| Environmental | ✗ |
| Other | ✗ |
NO APPARENT FEATURES
| APs Not Checked | ✗ |
| None | ✓ |
| Roundhouses | ✗ |
| Rectangular Structures | ✗ |
| Pits | ✗ |
| Postholes | ✗ |
| Roads/Tracks | ✗ |
| Other | ✗ |
See main summary
| 1: | None |
| 2: | None |
Guard Chambers: ✗
Chevaux de Frise: ✗
| 1. Simple Gap (North): | Approached by hollow trackway |
Single bank of uncertain character
| Area 1: | 2.7ha. |
| Total: | 2.7ha. |
Total Footprint Area: Noneha.
None
| ✗ | None |
| ✓ | None |
| NE Quadrant: | 1 |
| SE Quadrant: | 1 |
| SW Quadrant: | 1 |
| NW Quadrant: | 1 |
| Total: | 1 |
| Partial Univallate | ✗ |
| Univallate | ✓ |
| Partial Bivallate | ✗ |
| Bivallate | ✗ |
| Partial Multivallate | ✗ |
| Multivallate | ✗ |
| Unknown | ✗ |
| Partial Univallate | ✗ |
| Univallate | ✗ |
| Partial Bivallate | ✗ |
| Bivallate | ✗ |
| Partial Multivallate | ✗ |
| Multivallate | ✗ |
None
| None | ✗ |
| Earthen Bank | ✗ |
| Stone Wall | ✗ |
| Rubble | ✓ |
| Wall-walk | ✗ |
| Evidence of Timber | ✗ |
| Vitrification | ✗ |
| Other Burning | ✗ |
| Palisade | ✗ |
| Counter Scarp Bank | ✗ |
| Berm | ✗ |
| Unfinished | ✗ |
| Other | ✗ |
None
| None | ✗ |
| Earthen Bank | ✗ |
| Stone Wall | ✗ |
| Murus Duplex | ✗ |
| Timber-framed | ✗ |
| Timber-laced | ✗ |
| Vitrification | ✗ |
| Other Burning | ✗ |
| Palisade | ✗ |
| Counter Scarp Bank | ✗ |
| Berm | ✗ |
| Unfinished | ✗ |
| No Known Excavation | ✓ |
| Other | ✗ |
| ✗ | None |
| ✗ | None |
Number of Ditches: None
| ✗ | None |
Halliday, S P (2007) The later prehistoric landscape. In RCAHMS (2007) In the Shadow of Bennachie: A Field Archaeology of Donside, Aberdeenshire. RCAHMS & Society of Antiquaries of Scotland: Edinburgh
Name Book, Ordnance Survey Object Name Books (6 inch and 1/2500 scale); available https://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/
Yeats (1883) Trans Banffshire Fld Club (1883)
Atlas of Hillforts:
Wikidata:
This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
and should be cited as:
Lock, Gary and Ralston, Ian. 2024. Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland. Available at: https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk
Document Version 1.1