Hello Bob
The County of Roxburgh volume 1 of the Royal Commission of the Ancient Monumenst of Scotland (HMSO 1956) says of the possibility of Picts in Liddesdale or near vicinity:
'The Pictish symbol-stone, engraved with a fish, from the Borthwick water must have been set up amid a community capable of appreciating it. A small Pictish enclave is thus implied.....Pictish immigration is also suggested by another class of monument, namely the souterrain or underground chamber, of which two adjacent examples, S. of Newstead, are known in Roxburghshire.'
Perhaps the book you cite was referring to 'the stone-walled fort enclosing huts on Carby Hill' of which the Royal Commission says 'a Dark Age date seems likely for this work' (without sticking its neck out so much as to say it is Pictish!)
'Carby Hill which rises from the left bank of the Liddel Water two miles SSE of Newcastleton'.....'the summit is occupied by an oval enclosure 285ft in length..... by 225 ft..........The interior...... contains at least six huts. The most conspicuous consists of two grass-covered, stony rings, one inside the other and almost concentric with it; the inner one is 21ft in diameter and has a wall five feet thick' (Descriptions of the other huts follow.) This was the state of things when the site was surveyed on 18th May 1949, but ominously it also says' Concrete bases for two of the four legs of a forest fire-tower have been set in one of these huts' Regards, Lesley
