Kaimes Hill Fort Ratho, City of Edinburgh Council Area, Scotland, UK

Scheduled Monument Description

© Crown Copyright text courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland, reprinted under the Open Government License.

The monument comprises the remains of a multivallate prehistoric fort surviving as a series of earthworks.

The fort occupies the summit of Kaimes Hill and is bounded to the NW by a steep rocky scarp and to the S by a modern quarry that has destroyed much of its S part. The surviving area is enclosed by five parallel ditches and ramparts at its E end while the natural topography provides the defence and delimitation of the remainder of the periphery. In the interior are the remains of numerous round houses represented by circular stances of around 12-15m in diameter. Excavations in advance of quarrying demonstrated that the fort was constructed and occupied in several phases during the latter half of the 1st millennium BC.

The area to be scheduled encompasses the visible features and an area around them in which traces of associated activity may be expected to survive. It has maximum dimensions of 310m ENE-WSW by 120m as marked in red on the accompanying map.