Raith Hill
Raith Hill ATL R NT201904 1 385 170m
Raith Hill 1856 OS 6 inch 1st edn.
? en Raith + Sc or SSE hill
The first part of this name may come from G r?th ‘fort, fortified residence’, which is found in Raith KDT and Little Raith ADN. If it also relates to a territorial unit, as I speculate under these names, and in ADN Introduction, then it is possible that Raith Hill takes its name from this same unit. However, the hill itself is such that we may be dealing with an independently coined name referring to an actual fort.
OS Name Book 132, 7 describes Raith Hill as follows: ‘A small hill of very singular appearance south of the farm house of Walton covered with furze about a hundred feet higher than the ground about it. The place has the appearance of a huge heap of rubbish piled artificially in the shape of a pentagon at base with retiring slopes nearly at an angle of 45 degrees’. While Raith Hill is not recorded in NMRS (Canmore), this description, along with the possible significance of the name, makes it a prime candidate for further archaeological investigation.
This place-name appeared in printed volume 1