Burghead Fort
Burghead was a site of major power in the northern Pictish kingdom. The earliest defences were rough wooden palisades put up by Pictish settlers on the headland.
Nineteenth-century excavations recorded a wall 8m thick and 6m high with a foundation of large boulders. The wall contained rows of oak logs set 0.9m apart running across its width, with oak planks at right angles nailed to the logs using 20cm iron spikes. The whole framework was filled with rubble. Building these massive walls would have required a large labour force to gather timber, stone and iron from the surrounding area. Evidence suggests the walls went up around 400 AD and were destroyed by fire in the 9th or 10th century AD.
Viking raids took place in the late 8th and 9th centuries. In 884 AD Sigurd the Powerful captured Torridon, the name by which Burghead was then known. Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, led early Viking expeditions along this coast. Norse longships could shelter under the lea of the headland to land raiding parties. Burghead's access by sea, natural defences and sheltered anchorage made it a prized target for seaborne invaders entering the Province of Moray.
Burghead fort is the only Pictish fort where bullstones have been found. Thirty were recorded in the early 19th century but only six remain today: two in the Headland Trust visitor centre, two in Elgin Museum, one in National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh and one in the British Museum in London.
Archaeologists from the University of Edinburgh, led by Professor Ian Ralston, unearthed part of one of the original cross ramparts. The structure is difficult to date but is thought to be pre-Roman Iron Age, which helps confirm the long importance of the fort at Burghead.
Exploring the Fort Today
Most of the Pictish ramparts were cleared during the building of the planned village in the early 1800s, so what survives on the headland is fragmentary rather than a complete circuit. Even so, walking the Burghead peninsula gives a clear sense of why the site was chosen: open views across the Moray Firth, steep slopes to the sea and a narrow neck of land joining the fort to the mainland.
The Burghead Visitor Centre sits on the inner rampart and explains how the fort was laid out, what was found during excavation and where bullstones and carved slabs were discovered. The carved Burghead Well, one of the best-known monuments from the fort, can be visited nearby. Displays in the centre set the fort in the wider story of Pictish Moray.
