Context : Stellar clusters in the Small Magellanic Cloud ( SMC ) are useful probes for studying the chemical and dynamical evolution of this neighbouring dwarf galaxy , enabling inspection of a large period covering over 10 Gyr .

Aims : The main goals of this work are the derivation of age , metallicity , distance modulus , reddening , core radius and central density profiles for six sample clusters , in order to place them in the context of the Small Cloud evolution .
The studied clusters are AM 3 , HW 1 , HW 34 , HW 40 , Lindsay 2 , and Lindsay 3 ; HW 1 , HW 34 , and Lindsay 2 are studied for the first time .

Methods : Optical Colour-Magnitude Diagrams ( V , B-V CMDs ) and radial density profiles were built from images obtained with the 4.1m Southern Astrophysical Research ( SOAR ) telescope , reaching V \sim 23 .
The determination of structural parameters were carried out by applying King profile fitting .
The other parameters were derived in a self-consistent way by means of isochrone fitting , which uses likelihood statistics to identify the synthetic CMDs that best reproduce the observed ones .
Membership probabilities were determined comparing the cluster and control field CMDs .
Completeness and photometric uncertainties were obtained by performing artificial star tests .

Results : The results confirm that these clusters ( except HW 34 , identified as a field fluctuation ) are intermediate-age clusters , with ages between 1.2 Gyr ( Lindsay 3 ) and \sim 5.0 Gyr ( HW 1 ) .
In particular HW 1 , Lindsay 2 and Lindsay 3 are located in a region that we called West Halo , where studies of ages and metallicity gradients are still lacking .
Moreover Lindsay 2 was identified as a moderately metal-poor cluster with [ Fe/H ] = -1.4 \pm 0.2 dex , lower than expected from the age-metallicity relation by Pagel & Tautvaisiene ( 1998 ) .
We also found distances varying from \sim 53 kpc to 66 kpc , compatible with the large depth of the SMC .

Conclusions :