Publication Account

Date 17 December 2011

Event ID 922064

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/922064

The two camps at Eshiels lie on a level terrace on the north bank of the River Tweed. First recorded through cropmarks from the air in 1962 by St Joseph (1965: 79), the camps share part of their WNW sides. The full extent of camp I, the larger of the two, is not known, but 414m of the ESE side has been recorded, and, on topographic and morphological grounds, it is unlikely to have been much longer. It measures 327m from WNW to ESE, and it is likely that some 13.6ha were enclosed (almost 34 acres). Traces of a Stracathro-type entrance are recorded on its ESE and WNW sides: an oblique traverse is visible on the ESE side and that on the WSW may even have oblique traverses on either side of the gap; there are slight hints of an external clavicula on the south side (not depicted on illus 124).

Camp II, the inner camp, shares part of its WSW side with camp I. It measures 313m from NNE to SSW by 247m and enclosed 7.7ha (19 acres). Entrances in the centre of the NNE and SS W sides are visible, and both are protected by tituli. It is not possible to state whether it utilised the same entrance on the WNW side as camp I, because of the differing form of entrance protection.

RCAHMS probed the site in the early 1960s. It is unclear exactly where the probing took place on the camp, but a combination of probing and air photographs led them to construct much of the circuit of the camp, which by plan and dimensions must be camp II (1967: 171).

R H Jones