White Caterthun

Nearest town:
Brechin (8km SE)
OS reference:
NO552660
OS sheet:
44
Latitude:
56° 47' 0.23 N
Longitude:
2° 43' 59.88 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of White Caterthun (Hillfort) by thelonious

31/12/2018 – Photo of the ramparts. Well not really, I took it because of the surface block in the foreground. It's all that remains of the trigpoint. Built in 1949 but gone just a year later in 1950. No idea why it was removed. Maybe they had a rethink about putting it on an ancient monument but if that's the case what about all the other trigs on cairns, forts etc. round Britain! The Ordnance Survey have a bit of a checkered history when it comes to placement of trigs and old stuff. Still I love their maps so I'll let them off. If you visit this fort have a look out for the block and say hello. If you hate trigs, at least you can have a dance around it singing 'Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead'.

thelonious
thelonious Dec 31, 2018
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Articles

Folklore

White Caterthun
Hillfort
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Oct 28, 2007
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.. acording to tradition, the stones were brought from the West Water, or from the still more distant hill of Wirran [..]

..local tradition at once solves the mystery [of the use or gathering together of these stones], and says, that the place was merely the abode of fairies, and that a brawny witch carried the whole one morning from the channel of the West Water to the summit of the hill, and would have increased the quantity (there is no saying to what extent), but for the ominous circumstance of her apron string breaking, while carrying one of the largest! -- This stone was allowed to lie where it fell, and is pointed out to this day on the north-east slope of the mountain!

There follows a description of an incident "threescore years" before, from Tigerton. A child had become sickly and some people were convinced that he'd been swapped by the fairies, who "had carried [him] away by stealth to their invisible chambers about the hill of Caterthun." The only way was to stick him over a 'blaze of whins'. They craftily did it while his mother was out – and his screams soon determined that he was human after all. Which makes a change in such stories (unless, in this case it serves to underline how silly the peasants are).

From p267 of 'The history and traditions of the land of the Lindsays in Angus and Mearns' by Andrew Jervise (1853) – digitised on Google Books.

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Miscellaneous

White Caterthun
Hillfort
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Jun 23, 2005
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There is a stone with an impressive 80 cup marks on the west side of the fort. Another (with a paltry one cup mark) was found in one of the ditches, and was relocated to St Andrews University archaeological museum.

One of those curious knobbly carved stone balls (this one with four bumps) was also found here, and is now apparently in Brechin Museum, again according to the information on Canmore.

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Sites within 20km of White Caterthun

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