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I've been walking my dog recently in the Templeton woods in Dundee, Scotland. When I walked past the Gallow Hill water tower I came across these concrete (?) posts. There were about 20-30 of them and I'd like to know if anyone can tell me what these are and why they're there?

enter image description here

This is where the water tower is, but I can't see the posts on the satellite image:

56°29'43.3"N 3°02'02.6"W (Google Maps)

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  • Structure of a building at some time? They could not get a cement truck in so they buried posts.
    – paparazzo
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 19:29
  • That's an old building foundation.
    – ShemSeger
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 19:52
  • Neither the layout nor the structure is a common type of building foundation. The lack of obvious other debris is also odd. This must have been an unusual structure
    – Chris H
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 20:26
  • Old OS maps show some additional buildings without saying what they are. Are they in the right place (a few tens of metres east of the tower)?
    – Chris H
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 20:41
  • @ChrisH They indeed match the location! Can't say which one of the two it is though. Unfortunate, that it doesn't say what they were.
    – Baz
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 20:43

2 Answers 2

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They appear to be part of a water tank.

I've found a 1954 OS map that describes buildings at that location as "tanks" -- a term also applied on the same map to the water tower itself. Earlier maps don't show them

The current OS map only shows the tower itself.

Without a scale so making very rough guesses as to the diameter of the silver birch trees, they've been there a decade or so according to this paper (which was looking at rather different terrain so we can only guess very roughly). Of course the trees may have been planted long after the structure was demolished.

Indeed this map from 1989 doesn't show anything except the main water tower (though something is present in 1979).

And that's as much as I can tell -- google has no archive news about Gallow Hill or Clatoo long enough ago to be relevant, and I can't find photos other than modern ones.

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  • Those trees don't look "planted" to me - more likely to be natural colonisation.
    – Toby Speight
    Commented Oct 30, 2017 at 9:15
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There were two large steel water tanks on these foundations back in the 1960's. The tanks were rectangular. I used to play in these woods as a child and remember the tanks as being very rusty and military looking.

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