Publication Account
Date 17 December 2011
Event ID 920893
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/920893
Chalmers placed Richard of Cirencester’s ‘Ad Tinam’ on the River North Esk, and illustrated it close to the location of Balmakewan (1807: i, 124, Map). However, thereafter it apparently disappeared from the literature and is absent from Crawford’s thorough treatise on Roman Scotland (1949). St Joseph rediscovered the camp from the air in 1967 (1969: 112).
The camp is situated on the north bank of the River North Esk, close to the Luther Water, some 4.5km ENE of the Flavian fort and camp at Stracathro, and south-east of the modern A90. It lies on ground that slopes gently to the north, away from the river. and which comprises largely arable fields around the farm of Balmakewan, with a wood covering its northern portion. Parts of the northeast, north-west and south-west sides are recorded as cropmarks on air photographs, and tituli are visible in the centre of the north-east side and in the southern part of the north-west side, suggesting that the camp probably had six entrances in total. The section of the north-west side in the wood is not visible, probably destroyed by forestry ploughing, but a small part of the north-east side survives as an earthwork, partly owing to the presence of a deepcut forestry drainage ditch on what is presumably the line of the ditch. The rampart here survives up to 4.7m wide and 0.4m high, although the forestry has eroded parts of it in places. The camp is not quite rectangular in form,
measuring about 844m from north-east to south-west by about 665m transversely, enclosing some 55.9ha (138 acres). Two small trenches were excavated by St Joseph in 1967 and 1980 on the south-east and north-east sides respectively, confirming the location of the ditches on those sides, although probing failed to locate the southern part of the south-east side. The ditch is recorded as measuring up to 2.4m in width and 0.75m in depth (RCAHMS St Joseph Collection: Notebooks 4, 8).
St Joseph’s notebooks allege that he discovered part of the south-east side in a trench dug to the west of Balmakewan House (at NO 6684 6643), and he depicted a line on his plan (RCAHMS DC 37247). He noted that he failed to locate the ditch farther to the south by probing. No part of the south-east side is visible on air photographs, and the eastern end of the north-east and south-west sides suggest that the side lies farther to the east than depicted by St Joseph. It is possible that the ditch that he dug does not represent the south-east side of the camp, and that this side does indeed lie farther to the south-east.
R H Jones 2011
