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Henry's Brae is a Peeblesshire iron age fort, located on wacke bedrock of the Gala Group formation. The site occupies ground shaped by Telychian geological processes, its stone defences built directly into the Ordovician geology that underlies the Scottish Borders. The fort is protected by Historic Environment Scotland under designation SM2985.
Iron age communities in the Borders region chose hilltop and elevated positions for their fortified settlements between roughly the 8th and 1st centuries BC. These defended enclosures typically comprised banks, ditches and timber or stone ramparts arranged in single or multiple lines, serving as stock enclosures, storage centres and refuges. The wacke bedrock at Henry's Brae would have offered firm foundations and natural outcrops that could be incorporated into defensive structures.
The Gala Group stone of this locality, characterised by its hard metamorphic composition, provided suitable material for drystone fortification walls. Such forts functioned within the broader settlement patterns of iron age Peeblesshire, where hill forts and smaller defended homesteads formed part of a hierarchical landscape of dispersed and nucleated communities. The strategic position of this monument reflects the territorial and defensive concerns of Borders populations in the later prehistoric period.
Henry's Brae,fort is a scheduled monument protected by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM2985. View the official record →
Henry's Brae is a Peeblesshire iron age fort, located on wacke bedrock of the Gala Group formation. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM2985.
Henry's Brae,fort dates from the iron age period, and is classified as a fort. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Henry's Brae,fort is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by Historic Environment Scotland — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Scotland. The official designation reference is SM2985.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Stanhope, unenclosed platform settlement SE of Shaw Burn (5.9 km), Patervan, burial cairn and buildings N of (5.9 km), Stanhope,platform settlement,field system & farmstead S of Taberon Law (6.1 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Henry's Brae,fort's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Henry's Brae,fort stands on Gala Group, bedrock that formed in the Telychian. The rock here is wacke.