Qualla: Mither Tap Hillfort

Mither Tap Hillfort: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Robinson, CC BY-SA 2.0. From the granite summit of the Mither Tap, the whole of the Aberdeenshire lowland opens out beneath you in a single sweep, and somewhere down on that plain, in the autumn of AD 83, the Roman governor Agricola is supposed to have fought the battle Tacitus called Mons Graupius. We do not know exactly where the battle was, only that it was somewhere up here in north-east Scotland, and one of the leading candidates is the slope that drops away from Mither Tap toward the modern village of Inverurie. What is more certain is that a thousand-odd years of Pictish people thought this granite tor was important enough to wrap it in a double ring of stone walls and turn it into a fortified town. They were probably right.

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Image: David Robinson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mither Tap Hillfort: The Outcrop and Its Walls

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anne Burgess, CC BY-SA 2.0. Mither Tap is a prominent granite outcrop on the eastern end of the Bennachie ridge, the kind of weather-beaten knuckle of rock that draws the eye for miles around. The Pictish builders saw what they had and built accordingly. An inner rampart hugs the granite outcrop at the summ...

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Image: Anne Burgess | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mither Tap Hillfort: The Well That Held Water

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. In the lower citadel, the nineteenth-century Scottish antiquarian Christian Maclagan, one of the first women to be admitted to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, recorded a well that still held water in her day. The well was filled in during the twentieth century, but recent...

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Image: Bill Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mither Tap Hillfort: The Kingdom of Ce

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. The fort shows clear evidence of occupation between the fourth and eighth centuries AD, the heart of the Pictish period, and scholars have argued for a long time that it served as a major centre within the Pictish territory of Ce. The Picts wrote little down themselves, and what ...

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Image: Bill Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mither Tap Hillfort: Crucibles and a Gaming Piece

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah Charlesworth, CC BY-SA 2.0. Recent archaeological excavations have changed how we think about Mither Tap. The trench on the southeast side of the fort recovered iron fragments, an intact crucible, and slag, all evidence of metalworking inside the walls. Trench 4, in the upper citadel, produced animal bone f...

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Image: Sarah Charlesworth | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mither Tap Hillfort: The View North to Mons Graupius

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. Stand on the summit and the question of where Tacitus's battle was fought looks slightly different. From up here, the slope to the north and east opens onto exactly the kind of broad ground where two ancient armies could deploy. Calgacus, the Caledonian leader Tacitus has speakin...

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Image: Bill Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0