Publication Account
Date 17 December 2011
Event ID 923954
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/923954
The site of Steeds Stalls has long been associated with the Romans, owing to the upstanding remains of some ‘stalls’ in its interior, with these interpreted as the advance guard of the Caledonian army, sent to watch the Romans in nearby Inchtuthil (Sinclair 1793: ix, 258–9; NSA 1845: x, 1025). Elsewhere, they are recorded as relating to the Picts (Wilson 1851: 86–7). The presence of a camp surrounding the stalls was first recorded by Flight Lieutenant Bradley from the air in 1941 (Richmond 1943: 47–9, fig 9; Crawford 1949: 76; St Joseph 1951a: 64).
The camp is situated on the eastern part of the Hill of Gourdie, some 3km NNW of the fortress and camps at Inchtuthil. A Roman quarry has been recorded some 700m to the south-west (Pitts and St Joseph 1985: 61), and parts of a Roman road, possibly running from Inchtuthil to the quarry and Steeds Stalls, have also been identified (Maxwell and Wilson 1987: 27). The camp is almost square, measuring about 149m from NNW to SSE by 142m transversely, enclosing just over 2ha (5.1 acres). An internal ditch is visible separating the NNW and SSE parts of the camp, halfway through the camp, some 74m from the NNW side; an entrance gap is visible in the centre of this dividing ditch and in the centre of the SSE side.
Most of the site is under the plough, except for six or seven upstanding stalls. These are accompanied by a further five or six stalls visible as cropmarks. They have a tadpole-like appearance, with a round head some 4.5m in diameter and a tail some 6m in length leading out towards the camp perimeter. Similar ‘tails’ are also visible as cropmarks at the back of the upstanding stalls, and with nine such tails visible, this suggests some fourteen stalls in total. The cropmarks are slightly confused where the inner ditch meets the eastern side of the camp, but there appears to be a further stall here, taking the total to potentially fifteen such features. These features have been proposed as possible lime-kilns relating to the construction of the nearby fortress (RCAHMS 1994: 83). An alternative explanation that they formed a base for stone vaulting for a victory monument (Woolliscroft and Hoffmann 2006, 71–2) seems unlikely (see above, section 7f).
R H Jones.
