Excavation

Date 1975 - 1976

Event ID 1036174

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1036174

NT 190 770. Part of a Roman building was revealed during ground clearance for the construction of a car park S of Cramond Inn. Excavation showed the structure to be fairly extensive, and further work will be required to determine its complete ground plan. The walls at the W end survive to a height of over 1.5m from foundation level but elsewhere some stretches of the wall have been completely destroyed. The area so far excavated contains the remains of at least two hypocausted rooms, and the enormous number of broken flue-tiles removed suggests that the building was a bath-house, but so far no distinctive features have been discovered. The structural remains are clearly of at least two phases, and the small amount of stratified Roman material so far recovered suggests that these date from the Antonine period only, but one coin from the lowest of the disturbed levels is of Severus.

Information from Discovery and Excavation, Scotland Ms 1975.

NT 190770.

The hypocausted building discovered to the N of the fort in 1975 was confirmed as a bath-house. Three main constructional phases were distinguished. Eleven rooms of the final phase lay-out were established, including cold plunge-bath and latrine, but the northernmost part, including the main furnace, lay beneath the municipal car park. An interesting feature was the conversion of the original apodyterium and frigidarium into what was probably some kind of recreation area after the addition of a new unheated block on the E side in phase II. In this connection it may be of

some significance that among the finds were two pieces of tile with criss-cross grooving and a fair number of gaming pieces of various materials.

Amounts of Roman material were generally very small. Pottery dating from approximately the 14th century was found lying directly on the floor of the well-preserved cold plunge-bath and in the latrine were the remains of eight or nine humans buried together in considerable disarray and associated with the upper part of a cooking-pot of 14th century type. Elsewhere extensive robbing of building stone had taken place in the 17th century.

N. M. McQ. Holmes