It's said that East Lothian is so rich in archaeological remains that you couldn't put a spade in the ground anywhere without turning up a relic of the past. The area has been occupied and managed by man since the earliest period of human occupation. This cache is one of a series that take you to Bronze age and Iron Age structures. Kissjen has also placed a cache at White Castle hillfort ("Buzzard Country" GCVD24) which is well worth a visit and is an honorary member of the Bronze and Iron series.
Barney Hill is part of the line of the Garleton Hills - a sharp ridge line running east-west from Athelstaneford to a point north of Haddington. You can access the cache as part of a walk along the ridge line as recommended in the series of walks listed in the excellent East Lothian Council website. Or you can park close to the cache at N55.58.471 W002.47.125 on the minor road between Garleton and Haddington. There is room to pull a couple of cars off the road by the stile which takes the footpath over the wall here.
As you cross the stile the rise above you, clothed in gorse, is thought to be a Bronze Age defended settlement. There is a deal of evidence of other Bronze Age development hereabouts. Given the view it commands, the site was probably also in use through the Iron Age period.
The modern communications masts and associated development have made a mess of the hill-top. But it is worth taking a wander about and enjoying the commanding views to the Pentlands in the west, the Fife Lomonds in the North, the Lammermuirs in the South and the whole Lothian plain with North Berwick Law, Traprain Law and the Bass Rock all prominent.
Follow the footpath until it joins a farm-track. There is an old drystone wall to the north of the track backed up by a fence with an electric strand at the top There is no need to damage it - or yourself! Walk along the track until the arrow is pointing at 90 degrees and there is a convenient gate directly into the area of the fort.
The cache is towards the top of the rise surrounded by the lines of the "ramparts" which are better seen from the inside. (On the other side, the fort structure is suddenly truncated by the face of an old quarry.)
This is one of many Iron Age hillforts in the area which share a generally circular layout with a series of surrounding ditches and walls. Given the time they have been standing, the original walls and ditches must have been huge and required a great deal of labour to throw up. There is evidence that some of these structures also had timber facings on the outer sides of the walls. Some have very elaborate entrance "mazes". Similar ring style structures are common throughout Western Europe during the Iron Age. But despite the implications of the modern name "hillfort", not all of them are on hills and it's not at all clear that they were all defensive or military structures. (Although some very plainly were defensive structures and were attacked and besieged.)
The general use of the term "hillfort" is of a piece with the view of the Iron Age in Britain as a chaotic period of invasions and war. But the modern archaelogical view tends to dismiss much of that picture. According to some current thinking, there is little evidence in fact for the supposed waves of Anglo-Saxon invaders. It seems possible that Anglo-Saxon styles and speech and ways of life were taken up voluntarily in the period after the Romans withdrew. And it is possible that "hillforts" just became a very fashionable way of building!
One of the common features of the sites in East Lothian is the wide views the main sites command. You can generally see two or three of the other main sites in the area from each one. It leads me to wonder if part of their function at least was communication between settlements and/or protective overwatch. A sort of cctv for the times!
Come here and work out your own theory!