Debatable Land

Are the goldfinch ghost children

Their cattle chores done for two thousand years.

A small token from a long poem written by the printer artist, Colin Blanchard.  It is about the Iron Age hillforts above the White Esk river, three so far. This hill fort Bailiehill lies above the conjunction of the White Esk into the main river The Esk.  So many stories bounce around in the air, as the occupants all those years ago guarded their stretch of the river.  If you go but a few miles to the North, in fact just before the Tibetan monastery there is a Roman Fort (and bank barrow), did the Romans destroy these strongholds in the hills?

Bailiehill; As you explore this site you'll find features resembling those of Castle O'er about 3K to NW. Were they both at one stage frontier fortresses? This may have been "Debatable Land" between the territories of the Novantae to the west and their neighbours the Selgovae in what are now the Borders. There were probably clashes from time to time.

The first sizeable earthworks on the way up are probably the most recent, comparable with the 'annexe' earthworks at Castle O'er. They may have been used to for cattle ranching in the later life of the site. Looking over the wall, you'll see that, because of agriculture over the centuries, it's now impossible to trace the continuation of the 'annexe' earthworks in the two fields to the east of the site.

Moving on up to the summit, you can see that it is crowded with circular house scoops or platforms of two kinds:

• larger buildings defined by a ditch and outer wall foundations -'ring-ditch houses'.
• simple round platforms on which wooden houses were built. Smaller than the 'ring-ditch houses'.

Bessie's Hill fort; This fort must have served as a lookout post 

for the Castle O'er 'estate'. Keen eyed watchers would miss very little that went on in the upper valley, and would be able to send a runner along the ridge to Castle O'er in good time for reinforcements to be on their way to help deal with any threats approaching down the valley.

The pattern with fortified holdings elsewhere in the valley is for the entrance to open onto the yard, with the roundhouses on the far side from it. Find the entrance (SE) and look for evidence of a similar pattern here. Tussocky grass makes this difficult. A patch of rushes may indicate where at one time a well existed.

As at The Knowe, imagine the ramparts about half as high again with some form of palisade built into the structure, and the ditch half as deep again, and this may give you an idea of the site when it was fully defended. Again as at the Knowe there is little fortification overlooking the abrupt slope down towards the Esk. Only the most determined enemies would attack up this slope!
Canmore explanation

Castle O'er Hill fort;  As you approach the top you see two and here and there three separate ramparts, which in places are cut into the bedrock. It's likely that in the early period of the site none of these existed, and that there were only huts surrounded perhaps by a palisade.

On the hilltop it is suggested that the innermost ramparts on the edge of the summit (II) were later insertions inside the earlier ramparts, which were downhill from them. (IA, IB). This, in the form of a thick stone wall, gave defenders a smaller perimeter to defend against attack, and with better natural advantages. The imposing entrance fortifications to the southwest also belong to a later stage.

Having reached the top, look first at the circular "footprints" of the dwellings. They are huts (round houses), apparently lined up along a 'street', but be wary of assuming that all of them were lived in at the same time; in fact their footprints overlap. You can check by pacing that some were about 10m in diameter.

Much later the outlying annexe (defined by the earthworks C) was added to the settlement. These formed a boundary rather than a defensive wall, possibly for herding and containing livestock. The site plan also indicates that the fort is at the centre of a mysterious system of linear depressions with earthworks beside them. It is thought that these might have been to aid the herdsmen as they drove their cattle and sheep up towards the settlement.

These settlements/hill forts were settled over a long period of time, I suppose the gentler Bronze Age gave way to warring, perhaps over land or animals, and of course the rivers, the sole means of transport would have been vital highways.

Girdle stones; is this the entrance two stones with other stones brought here by later farmers as they cleared the fields?

Do not get lost in the woods!