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Craigiehill is a rocky ridge with what appears to be a Brythonic hillfort at its summit, and which lies North of the River Almond, above Edinburgh Airport and The Catstane, between Carlowrie and Craigiehall.
The name of Craigiehill is evidently of compound Celtic-Anglian extraction, the Germanic "hill" element being self explanatory. The Celtic element - craig - is common to both the Brythonic and Goidelic branches of the Celtic languages, and as such also features as a widespread element in Scots-oriented placenames, either as craig or crag (with local examples ranging from the evidently Brythonic Pencraig near Traprain to Salisbury Crags on Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh to the probably Gaelic Binny Craig in West Lothian). However, in this case, the likely derivation is Brythonic, due to the fact that the hillfort itself dates from that period of linguistic hegemony in this area.
Little remains of the fort at Craigiehill, other than a prominent circular ridge on the Northern end of the main rocky outcrop, worn away on its North-western side but still visible in an arc along the South-east.
The hillfort at Craigiehill is neither famous nor archaeologically well-researched, but seems to follow the common pattern of Bronze Age remains, being of a basically circular earthwork structure, possibly with ditches outside the main ramparts. It lies towards the centre of the hill as it was prior to the destruction of the Northern end in a modern whinstone quarry. On the Southern end of the ridge, the hill affords a panoramic view across the ancient farming plains of Midlothian and West Lothian, with Southern line-of-sight connections with Dalmahoy Hill and Tormain, the Pentland Hills on the horizon:
To the West, Huly Hill, Cairnpapple and the Binny Craig straggle towards the horizon. On the North side of the fort, it commands clear views across the Firth of Forth in particular:
Strategically, then, the hillfort would have been useful as an outlook position to protect the farming lands to the South from sea invasion, bearing in mind that the Picts across the Forth were famed for their fleets, and also that Roman and Anglian threats could easily come up the estuary to land on Lothian's shores. As such, the line of sight towards Corstorphine Hill and Arthur's Seat in the East was surely crucial to the efficient communication of warnings via beacon fires into the city itself.
It seems clear, then, that the Craigiehill fort functioned as a crucial component in the Bronze Age defensive strategy of the region of Lothian between Corstorphine Hill and the Bathgate Hills.