Gormyre Hill summit area

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 19 Jul 2026

I never noticed anything on my visit, but there are faint traces of a former enclosure on this small bobbly summit plateau. Despite the obvious scepticism of the Ordnance Survey surveyor (which can be found in the West Lothian/Linlithgowshire Number 55 naming book), the first (1850s) edition of the OS map here tentatively suggests that the low earthern banks may have been the remnants of a Roman camp. This information came from a local minister, and was debunked in incrementally strong terms by successive archaeologists over subsequent decades. However, their original purpose is still something of a mystery. A very interesting and detailed report of a 2012 archaeological survey is available on the cumbersome PastMap website. Nothing of any interest was found, and nothing of any major interest was determined - apart from the obvious fact that the enclosure would have been at the most a (low) few hundred years old. However, they do come up with some interesting theories. They are certain that arable farming was undertaken here at some point, and are confident that two of the sides were formed due to the result of ploughing - perhaps due to rig and furrow, but perhaps due to other ploughing techniques. These may have become longer lasting due to compaction, caused by people walking over the hill wanting to keep their feet dry when the adjacent lower land was wetter. Alternatively, they may have built up over time due to plants favouring the deeper soil and dying where they grew, in much the same way as a peat bog forms. The enclosure may have been there to keep horses and ponies that were used for nearby quarrying secure. Or it could have been there for 'tathing', a practice which died out two or three hundred years back, when fertiliser became cheaper and more readily available. It involved putting your cattle into a small confined space overnight, after they had been grazing on grass through the day, in order to make use of their urine and dung to fertilise land that was difficult to grow on. The houses to the right, immediately beyond the plateau, are in Torphichen, a small and genuinely historic village. (A settlement in West Lothian doesn't seem to have to have been around for very long to be described as such on its entry signs!)

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