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Continued entries/extra info

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Alexander Watt, who has given a description of this object in a small pamphlet* he wrote about Kintore,
had unfortunately died only a short time before my attention was drawn to it, so I missed his valuable
aid altogether during my search. He calls it (in his work) by the name of the "Deer's Den" and states it's
dimensions etc. as follows Vizt. (this was at the beginning of this century, about the year 1804):-
"The remains showed that it could not have been less than 18 feet wide at the base, leaving it
still some 6 or 8 feet high in some places with a ditch 8 to 10 feet wide, & contrived so as the greater
part, if not the whole, could have been filled with water. This wonderful Deer's Den was of an
oblong square form taking in a great part of the upper, or west, part of the town, & would have
"contained some 80 acres" (Scottish apparently) of land by measurement". He adds "only a very small
portion of that wonderful place of defence is now to be seen: the inroads of plough and spade have done
their work of demolition". At another part of his work Watt says that the Deer's Den "consisted until
very lately almost entirely of moor land". He excepts the East-face, which he says "had disappeared (if
it ever existed) long before the recollection of any one I ever communicated with on the subject. The early
cultivation of these lands will account for its total disappearance". That the track of over 300 yards
of this East face is still to be made out when the crops are up, is therefore rather remarkable, to say [Continued on page 4]
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Note. Alexander Watt was a Kintore man, but possessed of more than the ordinary intelligence of men in his station of
life. By his means some sculptured stones were saved from destruction at Kintore.

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Kate51- Moderator, hastingleigh, John Lovie

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