Archaeology Notes

Event ID 713216

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/713216

NT42NW 12 centred on 4248 2544

For adjacent fort, see NT42SW 1.

(NT 4248 2544) Roman Camp (R) (Site of)

OS 6" map (1959)

Roman Temporary Camp, Oakwood. In 1949 routine examination of the National Survey air-photographs revealed a Roman temporary camp at Oakwood.

In 1951-2 excavations showed that the camp had been approximately rectangular on plan and, with axial measurements of 1400ft and 980ft, had covered an area of 31 acres. The rampart, 15ft thick, was built of puddled clay, and the ditch was 6ft wide and 2ft deep, while the ditch upcast had been heaped on the outer lip to form a couterscarp mound.

Of the four gates, the surviving pair in the N and W sides each 20ft wide and are protected by double claviculae, while the E gate, of which the internal claviclus alone remains, and the vanished S gate may be assumed to have been similarly designed.

The substantial nature of the defences, and the fact that better tactical positions in the immediate locality have clearly been sacrificed in order to establish the camp as close as possible to the site of the Agricolan fort (NT42SW 1), suggest that the camp may have been erected primarily to house the labour force employed on the construction of the permanent work.

Only that portion of the defences which lies north of the east and west gates can now be traced on the ground is tussocky grass and then only to a trained eye. The rampart is nowhere more than 18 ins high, the ditch is revealed only intermittently by a growth of bent and the outer mound can be seen only in parts.

RCAHMS 1957, visited 1952; K A Steer and R W Feachem 1954

RCAHMS and Steer and Feachem confirmed.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (RD) 12 January 1966

The camp, which lies on a regularly ploughed NW-facing slope, is now extremely difficult to identify on the ground. The low bank and ditch in the NE corner is all that can be traced with certainty.

Visited by OS (MJF) 19 December 1979

Fragment of bun-shaped quern.

E J MacKie 1971