This site is entirely user-supported. See how you can help.
We don't have any photos of this monument yet. Why don't you be the first to send us one?
If Google Street View is available, the image is from the best available vantage point looking, if possible, towards the location of the monument. Where it is not available, the satellite view is shown instead.
Latitude: 56.6213 / 56°37'16"N
Longitude: -6.2107 / 6°12'38"W
OS Eastings: 141798
OS Northings: 755650
OS Grid: NM417556
Mapcode National: GBR CC16.XP1
Mapcode Global: WGYBS.KTQW
Entry Name: Dun Sgaillean, fort
Scheduled Date: 30 January 2003
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
Source ID: SM10555
Schedule Class: Cultural
Category: Prehistoric domestic and defensive: fort (includes hill and promontory fort)
Location: Kilninian and Kilmore
County: Argyll and Bute
Electoral Ward: Oban South and the Isles
Traditional County: Argyllshire
The monument comprises a fort of prehistoric date, visible as upstanding earthworks.
The monument occupies the level summit of an isolated rocky knoll situated in broken ground 365m SSE of Mingary farm buildings. The knoll rises 11.5m above the surrounding ground to a height of 61m OD; its NE and SW sides are steep and broken by sheer rock-faces up to 5m high, but from each end there is an easier approach over low rocky shelves.
Oval on plan, the fort measures 30m by 15m within a single stone wall, which varies between about 2.1m and 2.8m in thickness. Its remains are obscured by a stone-and-turf dyke which has been built on top of it all the way round its circuit, and which is doubtless contemporary with the remains of two enclosures of comparatively recent date situated within the interior.
Intermittent stretches of both faces of the wall are visible, however, and although only the lowest course normally survives, the outer face is still 0.85m high in three courses at one place on the ESE. The position of the entrance is not clear, but it probably lay within the broad gap in the wall on the NW.
Forts of this type are characteristic of the Iron Age (around 500 BC to AD 500).
The area proposed for scheduling comprises the remains described and an area around them within which related material is likely to survive. It is sub-rectangular in shape, measuring approximately 50m N-S by 57m E-W, as marked in red on the accompanying map.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
The monument is of national importance because of its potential to contribute to an understanding of prehistoric defended settlement and economy. Its importance is increased by its proximity to other monuments of potentially contemporary date.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
Bibliography
RCAHMS records the monument as NM 45 NW 10.
Bibliography:
RCAHMS (1980) The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Argyll: an inventory of the monuments volume 3: Mull, Tiree, Coll and Northern Argyll (excluding the early medieval and later monuments of Iona), Edinburgh, 84-5, No. 151.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
Other nearby scheduled monuments