The Hill Forts of West Lothian
Sometimes just being curious about what you see outside your car window can open up new experiences, paths of learning, and surprises. What I was to find out was the hills called Kaimes and Dalmahoy were intriguing to me even before I moved close to them. Clearly visible from the A71, I had driven past them many times in an effort to avoid the motorway, and the hills had always stood out as an appealing rocky outpost in an area that was quite flat.
I had also previously driven along the Linburn road due to a traffic diversion. This runs north of the quarry whose entrance is at the foot of the hills and the easiest way up. However, the first time my friends and I eventually went up them it was from the southern side. I was surprised to find it was the same hills I had driven past and that the pieces of my local geography were beginning to stick together.
Dalmahoy sits further to the east, a name now synonymous with the luxury hotel and country club retreat. Although it holds the trig point and feels more like a ‘top’, for me it is less interesting than its neighbour, my favourite local landmark, Kaimes Hill.
Kaimes is a fine example of us destroying our own ancient history. The settlement here could be about 5000 years old. Certainly the roundhouse on nearby Ravelrig Hill was. Although no materials were found here when excavated, the flint and fireplace were of the same age as local heavy hitter Cairnpapple. Ravelrig was the area we were initially looking for before finding Kaimes, cresting the edge illegally of a quarry which has no doubt eaten a lot of the ancient evidence.
Kaimes however had the double indignation of having been quarried, abandoned and then turned into a landfill site for 100,000 tonnes of waste from Edinburgh. Luckily in this case, the site was forced to close in 2001 due to some licensing irregularities. A little landscaping was done and the site still has those vertical pipes coming out of the ground to let the noxious gas out.
And so a small part of it remains, for now at least until the other quarry eats it from the north. The hillfort can be felt today in the indentations and ramparts in between the two hills, the entrance once facing Dalmahoy. A series of fences and a dry stane dyke mix in but the remains are clearly visible on the landscape, as is an entrance a little further up the hill.
It’s an evocative place, its history hidden, but a sense of time, a lot of it, is evident. High up on a flat plain, the views around are vast. The Ochils and Southern Highlands in the distant horizon, all the way up the Firth of Forth to Berwick Law. Its defensive capabilities are obvious when you see those craggy sides, but so is the site perfect for signal fires when the view is so vast. A little imagination and you can see the timber laced forts, an outer fence, and an inner face that was apparently 12 feet thick constructed with huge slabs and filled with stones and debris.
The sides of the buildings are banked with turf where 15 hut circles were at one point visible. There are stone footings, microliths, cup and ring marked stones, various jet, flint and stone artefacts were found as well as pottery from the Iron Age and the Romans. A Roman coin, a denarius of Severus, suggests either trading or raiding, and a nearby well suggests this was a domestic setting as well as defensive. Indeed the word fort in these cases is mostly misleading and suggests community rather than anything strictly militaristic.
Kaimes is a place I visit regularly. The last time sitting in the rain all night with my friend Rob. And I’m not the only one. Once, years ago now there was a tent left on the top. Eventually someone burned it, the poles sticking out of the fireplace like a warning. And three times I met the same guy hiking around the site and other than him, I’ve never seen anyone else there.
The site will continue to be quarried until one day it is all but gone. Who knows what knowledge we could’ve gained from the stones and the area had this not happened. Kaimes itself already has been butchered to a fragment of its former self, and Dalmahoy whose hillfort does not remain, will be eaten by quarrying. It seems that even evidence of the Mesolithic is not enough to halt the process of progress.
Live Deliberately
Barry
Currently listening to the new Necrowretch album Swords of Dajjal
