Excavation

Date 1973 - 1980

Event ID 559499

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/559499

No traces can now be seen of the Roman fort at Bearsden; it has long since been built upon. Parts were still extant in the 18th and 19th centuries, the S side and SW angle being best preserved at that time (cf OS 25" 1861).

Excavations by Dr D J Breeze, from 1973 to 1980, have shown that the fort, which was attached to the rear of the Antonine Wall, was 112m N-S by 100m externally and covered an area of 1.12 hectares (2.77 acres). An annexe on the E side measured c 109m N-S by possibly 55m. The ramparts, of turf construction with stone bases, were fronted by a single ditch on the S, triple ditches on the W, and a double line of ditch outside the annexe in the E.

Numerous internal buildings found included barracks, granaries, workshops and officers quarters, while a bath-house and latrine lay in the annexe. Two cobbled foundations W of the fort defences formed part of the civil buildings which are presumably of Roman date. Exploration to the E, W and S of the fort revealed no further trace of civil habitation.

No trace of the putative fortlet was found and no part of the site revealed evidence for more than the Antonine 1 period of occupation although the via principalis had been raised and widened.

Finds included a building stone inscribed to the XX Legion Valeria Victrix, pottery dateable to 142- 158 AD and a group of iron objects. Finds prior to 1946 comprise an intaglio, a second brass of Trajan and a bronze of Constantine I.

G Macdonald 1918; 1934; A S Robertson 1952; D J Breeze 1973; 1975; D R Wilson 1975; R Goodburn 1976; S S Frere 1977; 1978; R Goodman 1979