Knock of Alves

The Knock of Alves is a small wooded hill about five kilometres west of Elgin in Moray. It rises to just over a hundred metres above sea level. The summit carries York Tower, a three-storey octagonal folly built in 1827 to mark Prince Frederick, Duke of York. Nearby stands the Forteath Mausoleum, a burial place for seven members of the Forteath family from Newton House. A stone circle of six boulders, each up to 1.3 metres tall, lies roughly two hundred metres south of the tower. The hill is the remains of a hill fort used in both the Iron Age and by the Picts. It belongs to a group of forts that includes Craig Phadrig and Knock Farril to the west and Tap o’ Noth and Dunnideer to the south-east. The inner enclosure measured thirty-eight metres by twenty-three metres and was surrounded by a second enclosure of 126 metres by twenty-three metres. A third wall enclosed both, with ramparts running down the lower slopes. Visitors reach the summit along paths that pass the stone circle on the south side. The ruined walls of the fort show earth and rubble ramparts, some still marked by facing stones. Excavations in 2016 found postholes and deposits dating from 400–200 BC and 520–370 BC in the upper citadel. Lower deposits from 330–540 AD suggest the site was refortified in the early medieval period.