Archaeology Notes

Event ID 682398

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/682398

NO12NW 8 1050 2800.

(NO 1050 2800) Roman Camp (R) (site of)

OS 6" map, Perthshire, 2nd ed., (1900)

See also Sheriffton enclosure (NO12NW 21).

The Roman temporary camp of Grassy Walls, lying astride the Roman Road is an irregular quadrilateral, and belongs to the series measuring 120 acres or more in extent and having 6 gates; one in each of the shorter sides and two in each of the longer, each gate having its tutulus. The type is thought to belong to the Antonine and Severan campaigns. The only known Roman find from the site is a 1st Brass, probably Trajanic, found in May, 1907, in a newly ploughed field, and preserved in Perth Museum.

Description:

The obtuse NW angle of the camp can be traced a few yards back from the brow of the steep descent of Donald's Bank (NO 1018 2822). The remains consist of a slight mound rising from 18" to 2' above a distinct hollow outside. The northern rampart, which was about 1600' long can be traced from here as a broad, low mound, tending east by south through Drumshogle Wood (NO 1055 2845) which has been cut down since 1917. It leaves the wood on a line which would carry it towards the south side of a small pond. Within the margin of the plantation is a gap, possibly the northern gateway of the camp, some 15 yards wide, opening into what seems to have been a sunken way down the northern bank. The continuation of the rampart east of the pond was picked up in the wood as a low mound spread over a width of 15 yards, rising to a height of from 12"-18" and running east by north towards the road.

The NE corner is close to the road, and here is the only portion of the bank of the east side, which still remains visible. It can be seen best where it is crossed by a modern track. In August 1917, Callander could make out the line of the ditch of a stretch of the east side, as a crop-mark, 100 yards long and about 5' wide, stretching NNE from near the western side of a clump of trees, now removed. Aerial Photographs have verified this line, showing a gap of about 90' at the southern end of Callander's crop-mark, representing a gateway fronted by a tutulus. They also show its continuation from the gap, in a slight curve for 900' to where the line enters a rough wood at a point 300' NE of Sherifftown farm (NO 1080 2772). From this point the line cannot be traced through the wood. In 1941, however, the SE angle of the camp was photographed by F.Lt. Bradley in a field south of the wood. When Crawford visited the site in May 1943, he could discern very slight traces of the SE angle. On Aerial photographs the South side of the camp can be seen running from the SE angle in a WNW direction, to be lost in the wood until it emerges near the SW angle revealed by recent reconnaissance by Dr St. Joseph, which has also revealed the west side, the line of which was not known, south of the summit of Donald's Bank (NO 1015 2819).

Callander describes the section of the west wall north of the summit of Donald's Bank, as a rampart faintly traceable for about 100 yards from the NW angle of the camp, till it disappeared in a dense thicket, on a course which would pass a short distance east of the summit.

A short distance south of Donald's Bank there is a broad deep cutting with regularly trimmed sides, leading through the edge of a bluff from the low terrace on the river side of the plateau. Its large dimensions might entitle it to be considered as a work of the Romans, but as it leads directly to an old drive through the woods it may have been excavated at a very late period (J G Callander 1919).

McOmie, 1778 names the site 'Grassy Well', but as far as the owner in 1917, the Earl of mansfield, was aware, the name had always been 'Grassy Walls' and it is so named by Roy.

J G Callander 1919; W Roy 1793; O G S Crawford 1949; G Macdonald 1918; Information from two plans drawn in 1778 by Mr J McOmie (among papers of Perth Literary and Antiquity Society.