Publication Account
Date 17 December 2011
Event ID 923283
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/923283
The camp at Lintrose was discovered by Captain Robert Melville in August 1754 (Balfour-Melville 1917: 123n; Jones and Maxwell 2008), and planned by Roy the following year (Roy 1793: Pl. XIV). When Roy planned it, the whole of the WNW side, most of the SSW side and parts of the other two sides were upstanding, including a titulus in the WNW side. When Crawford visited the site in 1925, small stretches of the WNW and NNE sides were visible, along with two short stretches adjacent to the south-east corner (1949: 85–6). Today, only the small stretches of upstanding rampart close to the south-east corner and a stretch of the NNE side close to the north-west angle can be detected. The stretch of the WSW side south of the main road through the camp is barely visible as an earthwork. Much of the remainder of the camp is now known through cropmarks on air photographs.
The camp lies about 2km south of Coupar Angus, on level ground west of Lintrose House at the village of Campmuir; the Kinnochtry Burn runs along its east side. It measures about 624m from WNW to ESE by about 404m transversely, enclosing 25ha (62 acres). The titulus that Roy recorded in the WNW side is no longer detectable, but there is an entrance gap and titulus in the SSW side, towards the eastern part of that side. The size and layout of the two recorded entrances suggest that the camp originally had six gates. The rampart of the camp survives in a few stretches up to a maximum of 6m in width and 0.7m in height. Excavations in 2004 recorded that the ditch was V-shaped, measuring 2.3m in width and 0.75m in depth. These also noted a hearth feature of date within the camp (Hunter 2005: 393, fig 6).
The OS noted that an earthwork in Packmanley Wood, on the ESE side of the camp, had been proposed as its north-east corner by General Sir Riddell-Webster of Lintrose, but that it could be the remains of a track (OS Recorder 1958).
R H Jones.
