Accessibility

Font Size

100% 150% 200%

Background Colour

Default Contrast
Close Reset

Melville Nurseries

Ring Ditch (Prehistoric)

Site Name Melville Nurseries

Classification Ring Ditch (Prehistoric)

Alternative Name(s) Dalkeith Western By-pass

Canmore ID 53409

Site Number NT36NW 102

NGR NT 31650 67490

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

C14 Radiocarbon Dating

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/53409

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
Canmore Disclaimer. © Copyright and database right 2024.

Toggle Aerial | View on large map

Digital Images

Administrative Areas

  • Council Midlothian
  • Parish Lasswade
  • Former Region Lothian
  • Former District Midlothian
  • Former County Midlothian

Archaeology Notes

The ring ditch has long been known from air photographs. Re-examination of these, prior to the construction of the Dalkeith western bypass, revealed the existence of a further series of pairs of ditches.

Cuttings in the parallel ditches opened by machine and completed manually, revealed steep sided ditches, c80cm deep, with some of the segments containing 'ankle breaker' features. Large quantities of the fills were wet sieved during excavation, but no finds were recovered. One cutting exposed a fragment of cobble metalling between the ditches. The morphology and the absence of finds suggests that these ditches probably represent the fragments of a roadway. The profile of the ditches and their remarkable straightness, which ignore changes of slope, may indicate that they are of Roman date.

The ring-ditch consisted of a circular post trench with concentric inner and outer post-hole settings. The outer post setting was 17m in diameter. Within the inner post setting a further series of five post-holes was noted. At the east-facing entrance of the house the post trench turned outwards to form two 'horns' beside each of which a post-hole was revealed. The floor of this structure may have been at a slightly lower level than that of the surrounding land surface.

The building had been demolished and the larger posts uprooted. Large quantities of burnt debris were recovered, all consistent with the burning of a thatched roof. A small quantity of burnt daub was also recovered.

A series of three small hollows with distinctive fills partially underlay, and predated, the latter structure. Their date is unknown.

P C Raisen 1989.

The excavation archive from the cropmark sites of Melville Nurseries and Lugton Bogs has been catalogued. It consists of manuscripts, black and white negatives, slides and pencil drawings.

Historic Scotland Archive Project (SW) 2002

Activities

Note (1988)

Melville Nurseries NT 3157 6740 NT36NW 102

To the E of Melville Nurseries and about 40m S of the A7 public road, cropmarks reveal a roughly circular enclosure measuring 15m in diameter within a narrow ditch; there is an entrance on the E. Various linear cropmarks visible in the area include a curving ditch 120m long, which cuts across the SW side of the enclosure from NW to SE.

RCAHMS 1988

References

MyCanmore Image Contributions


Contribute an Image

MyCanmore Text Contributions