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Photo Pages: White Caterthun - Stone Fort or Dun in Scotland in Angus
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Submitted by ernar on Sunday, 26 September 2004 Page Views: 5315
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 Site Name: White Caterthun Alternative Name: The White Caterthun
Country: Scotland County: Angus Type: Stone Fort or Dun
Nearest Town: Brechin Nearest Village: Tigerton
Map Ref: NO547660 Landranger Map Number: 44
Latitude: 56.783347N Longitude: 2.743005W
Condition:| 5 | Perfect | | 4 | Almost Perfect | | 3 | Reasonable but with some damage | | 2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site | | 1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks | | 0 | No data. | | -1 | Completely destroyed |
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Ambience:| 5 | Superb | | 4 | Good | | 3 | Ordinary | | 2 | Not Good | | 1 | Awful | | 0 | No data. |
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Access:| 5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access | | 4 | Short walk on a footpath | | 3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk | | 2 | A long walk | | 1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find | | 0 | No data. |
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Accuracy:| 5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates | | 4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map | | 3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map | | 2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village | | 1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town | | 0 | no data |
no data
Internal Links:    
External Links:               White Caterthun submitted by cosmic
Stone Fort in Angus. An impressive construction, White Caterthun features a double rampart of light-coloured stones. The full rampart is still present (though toppled) and in the inside you can see what could possibly be the remnants of a well and several round huts almost hidden by the abundant heather.
The views from the top are impressive in both directions, towards the sea and the highlands. From afar, the frame set by the two caterthuns against the mountains is quite striking as they seem to flank the gateway to the Highlands.
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 White Caterthun submitted by DrewParsons
White Caterthun Hill Fort - the approach
 White Caterthun submitted by Hilary
View from the cup marked stone, towards NW.
 White Caterthun submitted by Hilary
Cup marked stone on west flank.
 White Caterthun submitted by cosmic
West side with Angus Munros behind
 White Caterthun submitted by cosmic
Interior Well
 White Caterthun submitted by cosmic
Inside SE side
 White Caterthun submitted by cosmic
Path up to fort
 White Caterthun submitted by cosmic
Sign at Car Park
 White Caterthun submitted by ernar
This composition (actually made of 3 different pictures) shows about 60% of the fort inner rampart, allowing us to better perceive the huge size of the enclosed area (unluckily the image edition is not perfect, its a big one and please... disregard the guy at the right)
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1.1km NE 61° Brown Caterthun* Stone Fort or Dun (NO555668)
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2.8km W 256° Hill of Menmuir* Cup and Ring marks / Rock Art (NO52096489)
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7.1km NE 50° Dalbog Stone Circle (NO587719)
7.5km SE 124° Aldbar Class III Pictish Cross Slab (NO594601)
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Re: White Caterthun (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, 22 August 2003 | | The White Caterthun is a small stone fort situated opposite the Brown Caterthun, a similar sized fort built of earth. The White Caterthun has impressive views - the sea, c. twelve miles away, is visible. There are cup marked stones on the ?southwest outer slope of the ramparts and a (dry) well in the enclosure. Usually lots of blaeberries in August. It is a sweet size and an easy walk from the road. The wind blows on the ramparts. | [ Reply to This ]
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White Caterthun (Score: 1)
by ernar on Wednesday, 18 August 2004
(User Info | Send a Message) | An impressive construction, White Caterthun features a double rampart of light-coloured stones. The full rampart is still present (though toppled) and in the inside you can see almost hidden by the abundant heather what could possibly be the remnants of a well and several round huts.
The views from the top are impressive in both directions, towards the sea and the highlands. From afar, the frame set by the two caterthuns against the mountains is quite striking as they seem to flank the gateway to the Highlands.
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Re: White Caterthun (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, 26 September 2004 | siubhal writes: The White Caterthun, near Kirriemuir in Angus, is usually described as a hill fort; however, its near neighbour, the Brown Caterthun, seems to have been a ceremonial site, and both are reckoned to have been built around 5000 years ago.
I suspect the White Caterthun may also have been some sort of religious monument rather than a defensive structure. In the first place, its walls, which consist of football-sized boulders and irregular stones, are remarkably uniform in their tumbledown distribution which suggests to me that it is a tumulus enclosing a sacred site, the stones having been deliberately put in their present location rather than being the remains of a wall several meters higher. Likewise, the outer "walls" seem more like perimeters than barriers. There is no obvious gate or entrance. And the shape is pointed at the western end.
Both structures are on two neighbouring hills which are breast-like in appearance, although the names do not contain reference to this. There are in Scotland a number of hills with names referring to this part of the female anatomy - The Pap of Glencoe, the Paps of Jura, the Paps of Fife (Lomond Hills), and so on. So the idea of a body/land metaphor is not unfamiliar. A connection with a female spirit, possibly a threatening as well as a nurturing one, may have survived in a local legend which states that the stones - a vast number,requiring an enormous logistical effort - were placed there by a witch who carried them up in one day.
What purpose could the caterthun have served? The shape is vaguely boat-like, and the direction it points calls to mind the ancient Egyptian belief that the soul voyaged west after death; perhaps the enclosure was a sort of burial ground and symbolic boat where the dead were left exposed. This function ties in with the general practice of piling up stones around the dead, which culminated in the Pyramids and also local tumuli. A more familiar practice, possibly a survival of this ancient ritual. is that of adding a stone to a cairn, originally supposed to have derived from the custom of burying certain people outside sanctified or holy ground and placing stones on their grave to placate any restless spirit which might hover about. Certainly, if this custom can be traced back to the building of the White Caterthun, there must have been a powerful spiritual presence needing a great deal of placating or containing, to judge from the numbers of barely portable stones in situ. | [ Reply to This ]
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Re: Cup marked stone, White Caterthun (Score: 1)
by Hilary on Saturday, 19 May 2007
(User Info | Send a Message) | | When Romilly Allen visited the site the two halves of the broken cup marked stone were separate, one lying "at the foot of the rampart just above the first outer ditch, whilst the other half has been rolled down the hill by some mischievous person with more muscles than brains, and is to be found immediately below, where its further progress was arrested by coming into contact with the outermost wall." The two parts are now reunited and an attempt has clearly been made at some time to bolt the two together and patch the split, but the side brackets are now absent, only the sockets cut to receive them remain, and some of the cement. It's still a handsome stone, but sorely damaged and difficult to reach. | [ Reply to This ]
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Caterthuns hillforts are part of a single entity (Score: 1)
by coldrum on Thursday, 01 October 2009
(User Info | Send a Message) | Caterthuns hillforts are part of a single entity
Visitors to two Iron Age monuments in Angus (Scotland) at the weekend
had the rare opportunity of taking a guided walk of the sites. The
tour of the Brown and White Caterthuns, about four miles north-east of
Brechin, was organised by Historic Scotland as part of Archaeology
Month, which runs throughout September. The hill forts perch on top of
two prominent hills between Brechin and Edzell and are protected by
systems of earthworks and ditches.
Until recently they had been considered as two separate sites
but a report, commissioned by Historic Scotland and published last
year, revealed there are more similarities between them than was
thought. Archaeologists uncovered evidence suggesting that they are
part of a single unit. The findings were the results of investigations
carried out at the 2,000-year-old forts over three years.
Historic Scotland senior archaeologist Richard Strachan led the
tour on Saturday and explained why the study was carried out. He said:
"This extensive fieldwork project gave us a much better understanding
of these two great enclosure sites on neighbouring hills, and it
enabled us to re-evaluate our interpretation of their history. We now
know that the forts were occupied for much of the first millennium BCE
and probably functioned as ceremonial centres. We concluded,
therefore, that the two sites should actually be considered together,
arguably even as parts of a single entity. We now have a much greater
insight into these wonderful ancient sites and a better appreciation
of them, but there are still things that we don't know about them and
more to discover about the Caterthuns."
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1394473?UserKey=
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