stirling-1963-vol-1/05_147

Transcription

No. 122 -- ROMAN MONUMENTS -- No. 124
At the time when the photographs were taken the E.
side of the camp lay in another field where the conditions
were not so responsive to crop-markings. It is possible,
however, to see what appears to be the start of the
rounded NE. corner of the ditch, and if this interpreta-
tion is correct the camp will have measured about 530 ft.
in length from N. to S. by about 420 ft. transversely,
and will have enclosed an area of 5 acres. The camp is
comparable with those at Milnquarter (No. 119) and
Little Kerse (No. 118), and with two others outside
Stirlingshire; the purpose of the group has been dis-
cussed in detail elsewhere, ¹ 1 and is briefly considered in
the Introduction (pp. 34 f.). (v) The fifth camp (G) is
situated on a slight eminence 700 yds. SE. of the farm
of Carmuirs (851805). The S. corner and parts of the
adjacent sides were photographed by Dr. St. Joseph, ²
while National Survey air-photographs ³ show an addi-
tional short stretch of the SE. side, almost the whole
of the SW. side, and a mark which probably represents
a stretch of the NW. side. If this mark is valid, the camp
will have measured 690 ft. in width by at least 800 ft. in
length.

BURIALS. In 1921 a Flavian coarse pot was found
together with three bronze discs, two small fragments of
bronze, some corroded fragments of iron and particles
of wood in a sand-pit 90 yds. SSW. of Camelon railway-
station (869806]. ⁴ The site of the discovery is marked on
the accompanying plan (Fig. 46, H). The sand above
the deposit had been disturbed, and although no human
remains were observed there can be no doubt that the
objects accompanied a burial, probably by cremation.
A second Roman burial was found in the same sand-pit,
270 yds. SE. of the railway-station in 1922 ⁵ (871805)
and is marked on Fig. 46 (J). It consisted of a cist
measuring 4 ft. in length, 18 in. in width and 2 ft. in
depth, the walls of which were formed of two courses
of large stones, mostly boulders, while the cover was
composed of three contiguous slabs. Inside there were
the fragmentary remains of an extended skeleton and
part of a Roman sword.
It is worth noting that a line joining the two burials,
if prolonged westwards, would intersect the E. side of
the "South Camp" at Camelon; and in view of the Roman
practice of burying the dead alongside main roads, it
seems possible, therefore, that these burials, one of which
is firmly dated on the ceramic evidence to the Flavian
period, give an indication of the route originally taken
by the Roman trunk road from York to the Tay in the
vicinity of Camelon. For the Roman road which is
marked on the O.S. map as branching off the Military
Way at Watling Lodge, and approaching Camelon from
the S., ⁶ is clearly a product of the Antonine re-
organisation, and there can be hardly any doubt that a
more direct route to the fort, avoiding the awkward
corner at Watling Lodge, was in use in the 1st century.
Such a route may well be perpetuated in part by the
present Nailer Road which borders the sand-pit in which
the burials were found.

863810 -- NS 88 SE -- 13 May 1958

123. Roman Fort, Stirling (Site). The Roman road
running northwards from the Antonine Wall to Strath-
more crossed the river Forth in the neighbourhood of
Stirling (cf. pp. 114 f.), and it may be regarded as certain
that a fort would be established here to guard the
crossing, and to provide an intermediate staging-point
in the 22-mile stretch of road between Camelon and
Ardoch. No remains of this fort are visible, however,
and its site has not been located. The traces of a "Roman
station" referred to by Maitland" ⁷ are probably nothing
more than the earthwork on the SE. side of the King's
Knot (p. 220), which, whatever its purpose, is clearly
not of Roman origin. The inscription on Gowan Hill
(No. 403), once considered to be Roman, is a forgery.

NS 79 SE (unnoted) -- 20 March 1957

124. The Roman Road running northwards from
the Antonine Wall. In Roman times the main road
from York to the Tay traversed the county, entering it
possibly in the vicinity of Linlithgow, where Roman
pottery has been found, and leaving it again at the Forth
crossing somewhere near Stirling. Apart from some
vestiges in Tor Wood, which are described in their
proper sequence below, this road has now been totally
lost, and between the point of entry into the county
and the fort of Camelon (No. 122) even its approximate
course is unknown. All that can be said is that Roman
burials found near Camelon (supra) suggest that in the
1st century the road approached that fort from the ESE.,
whereas in the Antonine period it would appear to have
joined the Military Way at some point as yet undeter-
mined, and branched off it again at Watling Lodge
(No. 114), thus approaching Camelon from the S.
To the N. of the Antonine Wall the road is better
documented, since much of it survived until the middle
of the 18th-century when land improvements for farming
began to take their toll. Thus Edgar, who made the
survey for his county map in 1745, was able to mark the
whole road in this sector, including an extension into
Perthshire beyond the Forth ⁸ ; Nimmo, some thirty
years later, still knew the line of the road but said that
in many places it had lately been dug up and demolished,
and had evidently seen parts of it actually undergoing
demolition ⁹ ; in 1792 it was "still entire in many parts" -
and thus, by implication, not in all parts - in Larbert

1 P.S.A.S., lxxxix (1955-6), 336 and fig. 6.
2 Nos. VY 9 and WB 72 in the C.U.C.A.P.
3 540/801. 3044-5.
4 P.S.A.S., lvii (1922-3), 246 and figs. 1(D), 4, and 5.
5 Ibid., 246, figs. 1(C) and 3.
6 See p. 113.
7 Maitland, History, i, 194.
8 It is unlikely that the "Roman Causeway" was one of the
items added to Edgar's map to bring it up to date for publica-
tion, with Nimmo's History, in 1777, in view of the discrepancy
between Nimmo's version of the course of the road NW. of
Stirling and that shown on the map (infra).
9 This is to be inferred from the degree of detail in which he
describes the method of its construction (History, 24 ff.) -
evidently the result of personal observation.

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