Archaeology InSites

The lost Roman building

These remains were first recognised by Alexander Curle at the beginning of the 20th century, who also made a startling discovery. The walls forming the enclosure and plateau consisted for the most part of the grey igneous rocks outcropping on the summit, but their lower courses also included sporadic, neatly-shaped rectangular blocks of pale red sandstone, some of which displayed ‘diamond-broaching’ – a criss-cross pattern scored into one surface that is characteristic of Roman work. Others exhibited herring-bone patterns, while some appeared to have formed sills or lintels. Curle concluded that these could only have been robbed from some abandoned Roman building that had once stood in the immediate neighbourhood. He also noted that their incidence clearly demonstrated that the fortifications around the summit (embracing the oval enclosure, its outworks to the north and the rectilinear plateau) could only have been constructed after the Romans had left Scotland. The blocks had been re-used as raw material in the construction of a new stronghold that had been built perhaps several hundred years after the abandonment of the Iron Age fort.

Nevertheless, the location of this lost Roman building in such an exposed and hostile environment was a puzzle. While they could have been robbed from a military post situated on the lower flanks of the hill, Curle could find nothing to support this. Instead, he surmised that the edifice must have stood upon the summit, ‘from whence a most extensive prospect would make it suitable for a post of observation, or for a signalling station’.

This idea was subsequently developed by Professor J. K. St Joseph of Cambridge University, who in the latter part of the 1940s discovered from the air the remains of a small Roman fortlet on the flanks of Brownhart Law in the Cheviots. Impressed by the extensive view to the north where Rubers Law dominated the centre-ground, he concluded that this must have been used for long distance signalling, with both sites forming part of a system exerting control over Southern Scotland. In the next few years, further weight was added to this hypothesis by the discovery of the earthworks of a possible timber watchtower on the summit of Craik Cross amongst the mountains far to the west, while those of another was recognised on the top of Eildon Hill North, sited immediately above the Roman fort of Newstead – the most important military post in the region.

However, it is now generally accepted that long-distance signalling would have been impractical and an explanation for the Roman stonework at Rubers Law still remains elusive. While the blocks could derive from a stone watchtower with a much more local remit, it is also possible that they originate from a shrine or some other kind of landmark. A T Welfare