Publication Account

Date 17 December 2011

Event ID 923960

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/923960

The remains of the camp at Tollpark were first discovered through cropmarks by St Joseph in July 1949 (St Joseph 1951a: 62). It is situated some 410m south of the Antonine Wall, approximately midway between the forts of Castlecary and Westerwood. The two camps at Garnhall lie a short distance away to the north-east.

The site lies on ground which slopes gently from west to east, about 400m south-east of the former farm of Tollpark, but the entire area is now covered by the Wardpark North Industrial Estate. Early editions of the Ordnance Survey map (Dunbartonshire 1864: sheet xxv) show that the area lay under agricultural fields, bisected by a trackway that ran NNW to SSE through the camp to Faulds Cottage to the south.

The camp measures about 186m from WSW to ENE by about 130m transversely, although it is slightly wider at the west than the east by some 10m. It encloses an area of about 2.5ha (just over 6 acres). The majority of the perimeter has been recorded from the air (in 1949 and 1951) but could not be detected through probing by Feachem in 1956 (Feachem 1958: 329). A probable entrance gap was recorded in the ENE sides, and two apparent entrances recorded in the WSW side during excavations (see below), but no additional gate protection, such as tituli, were noted (White forthcoming); there are also slight gaps in the cropmarks on the two longer sides (although these are not necessarily due to the presence of entrances). It is possible that the track that crosses the camp represents the location of the entrance on one side as the track kinks in the centre. Evaluation and trial trenching in 1998 could not locate any remains of the camp and suggested that previous development work had removed all trace of archaeological deposits through scarping into the side of the slope on which the camp lay (Duffy 1998b: 11).

However, excavations in 2005 and 2006, following the removal of the OKI factory, recorded significant survival of the ditch (228m of which was excavated), although no other features associated with the camp were identified. The ditch was generally V-shaped, and varied in width from 1.4m to 4m and was up to 1.4m in depth. It did not appear to be deliberately in-filled but seemed to have gradually filled up owing to the slumping of the rampart material. A large boulder in part of the ditch appeared to have been modified to continue the ditch’s profile. Later recuts of the ditch were thought to be related to agricultural drainage (White forthcoming).

R H Jones.