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Black Castle, East Lothian

hillfort in East Lothian, Scotland, UK

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 22, 2025
Entity authorityQ4920500 ↗
Source-derived summary

Black Castle, East Lothian is an Iron Age hillfort with a number of defensive banks, located 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) south-east of Gifford, East Lothian, Scotland. It is south of the B6355 road, between Darent House and Green Castle hillfort.

The fort is on the summit of a hillock, at 900 feet (270 m). It measures about 380 by 340 feet (120 by 100 m). It has an inner and an outer rampart, and two entrances marked by causeways. To the west is a plantation named Black Castle wood.

It is a designated scheduled monument.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Black Castle, East Lothian” as hillfort in East Lothian, Scotland, UK. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Black, Castle and East.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 95-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Black, Castle and East providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Black Castle, East Lothian”, the useful work is to connect “hillfort in East Lothian, Scotland, UK” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4920500. Authority coordinates are 55.887, -2.673. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Black Castle, East Lothian”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Black Castle, East Lothian primary sources, Black Castle, East Lothian archive and Black research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Black Castle, East Lothian” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.