The Caterthuns and Edzell

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The Caterthuns

The Caterthuns are two large hill-top Iron Age forts near Edzell in Angus. The white Caterthun is very distinctive with an extensive ring of white rubble, the remains of the drystone perimeter wall which originally would have been 12m thick and several metres high.

White Caterthun
White Caterthun
White Caterthun

The Brown Caterthun is not nearly so easy to distinguish on the ground: it’s just a series of mounds. In fact we were right in the middle of it before we realised!

Brown Caterthun
Brown Caterthun

It was impossible to get pictures to do justice to either fort so, for anyone interested, this video has superb aerial footage as well as a reconstruction of how the White Caterthun might have looked all those centuries ago.

The Caterthuns from Kieran Baxter on Vimeo.

From here, we went into Edzell, a charming village entered under the Dalhousie Arch which was erected in 1887 in memory of the 13th Earl of Dalhousie and his wife. Our first objective was lunch, which we found at the Panmure Arms (very good) before exploring further.

Dalhousie Arch
Panmure Arms
Inglis Memorial Hall
Drinking fountain
Edzell Church
Britain in Bloom

Just north of Edzell is the “Blue Door” walk along the gorge of the River North Esk. A good way to work off lunch! Running through The Burn estate, a charitable trust, the original path was created in the late 18th century and was walked by none other than Queen Victoria in 1861. That woman got everywhere! One thing that was very noticeable was the result of last winter’s storms – so many fallen trees, now being cleared away.

The Blue Door
Bridge over the North Esk
Fallen trees near Edzell
River North Esk
River North Esk
River North Esk
Fallen trees near Edzell
The Burn
Fallen trees near Edzell

This was a lovely excursion on the last day of our 2022 Easter Break on the Angus coast. However, it is not my last post about it, because we did make a foray into Aberdeenshire earlier in the week. I’ve saved that till the end because there are so many photographs I’m a bit daunted. The visit included Catterline, a village I have wanted to visit for years. Find out why next time!

Scotland, UK , , ,

44 Comments »

  2. The Caterthun forts sound so interesting – what an incredible video production too! I loved the way they reconstructed the mounds and forts as they were likely to have been back in the Iron Age. I also loved the changing of the seasons – they look so pretty in the snow plus the choice of music was wonderful! Looks like you had a lovely day out here and in Edzell 🙂

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  3. I’d never heard of the Caterthuns and it was so interesting to see the video.
    Dalhousie makes me think of Isabel Dalhousie in the Alexander McCall Smith books. I suppose there had to be a place called that!

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  5. An interesting post Anabel, I’d never heard of the Caterthuns before. I enjoyed the video, the white Caterthun looks amazing from the air, especially with the snow on the ground 🙂

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  8. The Caterthun forts are fascinating! I enjoyed the video with the aerial views and reconstruction. It certainly makes one wonder about life in those ancient times.

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  10. Hi Anabel – what an interesting place – two exposed forts … I thought perhaps the weather might have been warmer.- but no the bronze age was cooler. The estate walk appears interesting after the storms … lovely to see – cheers Hilary

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  12. Didn’t know about the hill forts. Have visited Edzell to do that river gorge walk. Shame about so many trees going down as that was one of the scenic highlights along the gorge but even in Glasgow our city parks are notably thinner each year due to winter storms claiming some of the mature ones that leave a big hole in the landscape when they disappear..

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    • Hello Sarah, I have tried and tried over your last few posts to comment on your blog and I just can’t! It says I have to log in to comment, then doesn’t recognise my WordPress username and password. It allows me to Like though, so it obviously does know me! Clicking the follow button doesn’t help either (I use Feedly for blogs so don’t usually follow on WordPress). There seem to be multiple problems with commenting at the moment. With some sites I just disappear into spam, and on others I come up as anonymous. Anyway – what I meant to say today was that I think we possibly stayed in the same place in Bevagna! See what you think here:

      Assisi, Umbria

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