Hillforts of The Tay

Discover the stories of the 2000 year old old Iron Age strongholds which commanded views across the Tay and Earn rivers.

Hillforts feature regularly on the landscape of the Ochil and Sidlaw hills and a number have been excavated and studied in the past. Many of those studies were undertaken by Victorian archaeologists, who had no access to carbon dating, but the sites are likely to have been used over a wide time-frame. Though the occupants of each are likely to have been power-brokers within the local area, none straddled the land like those who ruled from Moncreiffe Hill. The stronghold would have been ideal for security and defence, offering commanding views of approach by land or water.

Table of Contents

Moncreiffe Hillfort illustrations

Abernethy Hillfort Chris Mitchel	Moncreiffe Hillfort	Moredun Top Hillfort Chris Mitchell

Moncreiffe Hill, located just south of Perth, was long believed to have the remains of two hillforts on its summits, but this had never been proven through excavation. A dig team, led by Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust and Tay Landscape Partnership (TayLP) with support from AOC Archaeology and a host of fantastic volunteers undertook the excavations. This dig revealed some amazing large fort defense walls, made from large stone blocks – perfect for modelling a Minecraft world…

Minecraft Build

Moncrieffe Hill was created as part of the Tay Landscape Partnership’s UNEARTH The Mystery of Prehistory festival in Perth City 2015. It took the team at ImmersiveMinds over 4 weeks to complete and is, to date, the largest heritage build they have undertaken. While the historical emphasis was on Moredun Top Fort, Moncrieffe Hill itself had to be recreated in its entirety. As with all Crafting the Past Minecraft builds, the landscape was created at 1:1 scale and topographically accurate, using data from a variety of GiS ported in to Minecraft. From there, Moredun Top Fort was recreated on this hill from archaeological drawings and discussions with the team at the TayLP. Areas of interest brought to digital life focused on typical fort structures -roundhouses, farmland and of course, the iconic defence walls.

A multi user minecraft server is available server is available at turret.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk port 9001.

DOWNLOADS

Explore the Hillfort! Download

Download this zip file to explore Moredun Top Hillfort – for use on PC/MAC/Linux

Excavate the ruined Hillfort! Download

Download this zip file to explore the ancient ruins of Moredun Top Hillfort – for use on PC/MAC/Linux

Can you uncover the hidden archaeology and remains of the fort?