Note
Date 9 December 1992
Event ID 1106856
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1106856
Situated about 500m NW of Hatton farmhouse, on the left bank of the River Isla, there are the almost totally denuded remains of a Roman fort and its annexe. Tentatively identified from the air by Eric Bradley in 1941, it was not recorded again until 1977, when cropmarks revealed much of the defensive perimeter of the fort, as well as the triple ditches defining the NE side of the annexe, which extends NW to the very bank of the river.
Facing NW towards the presumed river-crossing, the fort measured about 170m by 120m over a turf-and-earth rampart originally measuring about 6m thick. It was further defended, on the NE and SE, by three ditches measuring up to 4.5m in breadth, but on the SW only double ditches have been recorded; at the NE and SW entrances (the portae principales) the outer ditch curves inward to unite with the inner in a 'parrot's beak' of typical Flavian form. There were apparently no ditches separating the annexe from the NW front of the fort (an indication that the former was not a secondary addition), and there appears to have been an entrance to the annexe on the SE, where the triple ditches of the NE side stop 6m short of the N angle of the fort.
Exploratory excavation in 1980 and 1981 confirmed the evidence of the cropmarks on the NE front of the fort and identified timber buildings (one of them a granary) in the interior; two structural phases were recognised in these buildings and at least three in a limited examination of the relationship between the annexe and the NW rampart. Few datable artefacts were recovered during excavation, but an assemblage of samian ware later discovered by chance near the SW gate pointed to abandonment of the site not long after AD 85.
Information from RCAHMS (JRS) 9 December 1992.
G S Maxwell and D R Wilson 1987; G S Maxwell 1989.
