OF ARCHITECTURE IN SCOTLAND.
The state of architecture in North Britain having been inferior to that in the more extensive and wealthy dis tricts of the southern parts of the island, we have, as much as possible, avoided mixing it with the account of the progress of architecture in England ; but the Edin burgh Encyclonadia would be accused of an unpardon able remissness, if this part of the subject was left wholly unnoticed : to avoid this imputation, we therefore insert the following sketch.
While the country was inhabited by small, rude, and nearly independent tribes and clans, and was, at the same time, exposed to incursions of the equally rude tribes from the northern parts of the continent, it is natural to expect, that the chief attention would be bestowed upon places of security, to which they could retire with their families. We accordingly find in Scotland the vestiges of two sorts of buildings apparently of the aforesaid de scription,whose xra and mode of construction has never hitherto been satisfactorily made out by either historians or antiquarians. We here allude to the large circular towers built of rubble stones, laid in a regular manner without mortar, and to those singular structures known by the name of vitrified forts.
The vitrified forts are generally situated on high and partly insulated hills, where the space on the summit is occupied by the fortress. They consist of walls or mounds, composed of stones of various kinds and sizes, of irregular forms, without any mortar, but cemented by means of calcined pudding-stone. The interior space in closed, varies in the several forts from 140 yards in length and 40 in breadth, to 25 yards by 15. In some, •there is only one inclosing wall or mound ; in .others, as Craig Phadrick, there are two, leaving a space of 10 or 12 feet between them. The thickness of the vitrified walls or mounds varies from 7 or 8 feet to 40. These structures being situated to command a great extent of country, and so that there are two within sight of each other, they appear, as well as places of protection, to have been a chain of signals. Craig Phadrick, situated a mile west of Inverness, at the north-eastern extremity of the great Glen of Scotland, upon the point of a ridge projecting considerably before the other parts of the hilly country, and facing the middle of the great bay of the Murray Firth,• could readily receive notice of the landing of an enemy upon any point of its extensive shores. This in telligence could be instantly conveyed to Dun Sgrebin ' on the north side•of Loch Ness, and from thence to Dun Jardel on the south side, and from it to Dun Deam near 'Fort Augustus, and thence to a vitrified fort in Glen Avis near Fort William, and from the latter place down -the shores of the Linnhe Loch to the Western Isles, the ' southern parts of and the Firth of the • Cl;cle.:' If .an enemy appeaised on the western coasts, a similar operation could convey intelligence to Craig Pha . drick, from.whence•it could be forwarded northward to the extensive vitrified fortress of Knock Farril in Ross shire, and that of the hill of Cruich in Sutherland ; and, at the same time; by means of Dun Evan and Castle Fin '. lay in..Nalrnshire, the alarm would be passed along the
_coast .oriqurray, and from thence across the valleys of the Don 'and flee to the Nitrified fort of Finaven in Strath .: rittre,and thus meet the intelligence from the west in the solithempartS of Scotland. It is most probable that these signals were made by means of lighting fires of wood, • Fhb which there is abundant evidence, that every hill was anciently clothed ; and these intense fires, repeatedly placed against these inclosures composed of fusible mate rials, are considered by Sir Geo. Mackenzie, Bart. (see the article VITRIFIED FORT, which Sir George Mac kenzie has had the goodness to draw up for this work,) as quite sufficient to have produced all the vitrification, respecting which, various other theories have of late years been offered. Mr John Williams, a mineral engineer, who, by publishing a Treatise expressly on the subject in 1777, first brought these structures into public notice, is of opinion, that they were constructed by raising two pa rallel dykes of earth or sod in the direction of the intend ed wall, with a space between them sufficient for its thickness, where the fuel was put in and set on fire, and upon this the fusible pudding-stone (usually found near the spot) being laid, was kept from running off by the aforesaid sod or earthen dykes ; and this operation being repeated, the wall was raised to the desired height. Mr A. Fraser Tytler, professor of Civil History in Edin burgh, afterwards Lord Woodhouselee, examined these forts in 1782, and furnished an excellent paper on the subject, which is inserted in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His opinion is, that the walls or mounds have been built between two rows of wooden stakes, secured together by boughs of trees, hav ing the spaces between these rows filled with stones, earth, and trunks and boughs of trees, and that the vitrification took place during the destruction of the mass by fire. Cordiner considers each fort to be an ex tinguished volcano, and that the wells found in the in closures are the craters; but in Craig Phadrick there is no well, and the space upon which the fort is construct ed is a mass of undisturbed pudding-stone rock, and it would have been a singular circumstance, to have found small volcanoes so conveniently situated for a chain of signals. But setting aside the theories respecting the mode of construction, it is quite certain that vestiges of these rude fortresses now exist, and that they must have been formed by artificial means, to serve the purposes of the inhabitants in a very remote period. In that view, they must be allowed to be works of great magnitude and labour, and they now form a singular feature in the country, and a subject worthy the notice of the antiquary and historian.