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Grassy Walls
Temporary Camp (Roman)
Site Name Grassy Walls
Classification Temporary Camp (Roman)
Alternative Name(s) Scone Palace Policies; Scone Park; Drumshogle Wood; Grassy Wells
Canmore ID 28188
Site Number NO12NW 8
NGR NO 1050 2800
NGR Description Centred on NO 1050 2800
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/28188
- Council Perth And Kinross
- Parish Scone
- Former Region Tayside
- Former District Perth And Kinross
- Former County Perthshire
NO12NW 8 1050 2800.
(NO 1050 2800) Roman Camp (R) (site of)
OS 6" map, Perthshire, 2nd ed., (1900)
See also Sheriffton enclosure (NO12NW 21).
The Roman temporary camp of Grassy Walls, lying astride the Roman Road is an irregular quadrilateral, and belongs to the series measuring 120 acres or more in extent and having 6 gates; one in each of the shorter sides and two in each of the longer, each gate having its tutulus. The type is thought to belong to the Antonine and Severan campaigns. The only known Roman find from the site is a 1st Brass, probably Trajanic, found in May, 1907, in a newly ploughed field, and preserved in Perth Museum.
Description:
The obtuse NW angle of the camp can be traced a few yards back from the brow of the steep descent of Donald's Bank (NO 1018 2822). The remains consist of a slight mound rising from 18" to 2' above a distinct hollow outside. The northern rampart, which was about 1600' long can be traced from here as a broad, low mound, tending east by south through Drumshogle Wood (NO 1055 2845) which has been cut down since 1917. It leaves the wood on a line which would carry it towards the south side of a small pond. Within the margin of the plantation is a gap, possibly the northern gateway of the camp, some 15 yards wide, opening into what seems to have been a sunken way down the northern bank. The continuation of the rampart east of the pond was picked up in the wood as a low mound spread over a width of 15 yards, rising to a height of from 12"-18" and running east by north towards the road.
The NE corner is close to the road, and here is the only portion of the bank of the east side, which still remains visible. It can be seen best where it is crossed by a modern track. In August 1917, Callander could make out the line of the ditch of a stretch of the east side, as a crop-mark, 100 yards long and about 5' wide, stretching NNE from near the western side of a clump of trees, now removed. Aerial Photographs have verified this line, showing a gap of about 90' at the southern end of Callander's crop-mark, representing a gateway fronted by a tutulus. They also show its continuation from the gap, in a slight curve for 900' to where the line enters a rough wood at a point 300' NE of Sherifftown farm (NO 1080 2772). From this point the line cannot be traced through the wood. In 1941, however, the SE angle of the camp was photographed by F.Lt. Bradley in a field south of the wood. When Crawford visited the site in May 1943, he could discern very slight traces of the SE angle. On Aerial photographs the South side of the camp can be seen running from the SE angle in a WNW direction, to be lost in the wood until it emerges near the SW angle revealed by recent reconnaissance by Dr St. Joseph, which has also revealed the west side, the line of which was not known, south of the summit of Donald's Bank (NO 1015 2819).
Callander describes the section of the west wall north of the summit of Donald's Bank, as a rampart faintly traceable for about 100 yards from the NW angle of the camp, till it disappeared in a dense thicket, on a course which would pass a short distance east of the summit.
A short distance south of Donald's Bank there is a broad deep cutting with regularly trimmed sides, leading through the edge of a bluff from the low terrace on the river side of the plateau. Its large dimensions might entitle it to be considered as a work of the Romans, but as it leads directly to an old drive through the woods it may have been excavated at a very late period (J G Callander 1919).
McOmie, 1778 names the site 'Grassy Well', but as far as the owner in 1917, the Earl of mansfield, was aware, the name had always been 'Grassy Walls' and it is so named by Roy.
J G Callander 1919; W Roy 1793; O G S Crawford 1949; G Macdonald 1918; Information from two plans drawn in 1778 by Mr J McOmie (among papers of Perth Literary and Antiquity Society.
Field Visit (16 October 1963)
In Drumshogle Wood at c. NO 1084 2830 a slight swelling of the ground across a modern track probably indicates the east bank of this camp. It is a slight mound 0.3m high and c. 7.0m wide running for a distance of c. 24.0m. Perambulation of the camp as indicated on Aerial photographs failed to reveal any other traces of its perimeter. Much of the woodlands are overgrown with willow herb to a height of c. 2.0m.
In Perth Museum is a Brass coin of TRAJAN, 2nd century, AD. "Found at the Roman Camp at Grassywalls near Scone on 13th May 1907 by Mr Archibald Gray". Acc. No. 1346
Visited by OS (WDJ) 16 October 1963.
Note (14 December 1992)
This temporary camp is situated on the left bank of the River Tay, immediately S of its confluence with the Gelly Burn and about 1.1km NNW of Scone Palace.
The camp presents a markedly irregular quadrilateral on plan, the result of difficulties imposed by the awkwardly-contoured high ground S of the Gelly Burn; its axial dimensions are approximately 670m by 760m and it occupies an area of about 52ha. The positions of two of the camp's six gates have been identified; at both there is a marked re-entrant angle and an external traverse has been recorded. Sectors of the enclosing rampart and ditch on the N, W and E sides can still be traced in Drumshogle Wood near the NW angle and on either side of the NE angle; where best preserved, the remains appear as a low grassy bank which measures up to 6m in thickness and stands up to 0.6m above the bottom of an external ditch about 3m wide.
The area of the camp indicates beyond doubt that it belongs to the series of large camps accommodating the entire field-army of the emperor Septimius Severus in the campaigns of AD 208-11.
Information from RCAHMS (JRS) 14 December 1992.
Publication Account (17 December 2011)
The camp at Grassy Walls was first planned by Roy in 1771 (1793: Pl. XII), and was also recorded and planned, not as accurately, by the Rector of Perth Grammar School (J McOmie) in 1778 (Callender 1919: 141). However, by the 1850s, the Ordnance Survey were able to record only the site location on the 1st-edition map because the surrounding landscape had changed quite dramatically and the farm of Grassy Wells had vanished (Perthshire 1867: sheet lxxxvi). Callender noted some remains of the north part of the camp in Drumshogle Wood and Donald’s Bank on the ground in 1917 (Callender 1919: 138ff ); Crawford also noted the upstanding remains in Drumshogle Wood (1949: 64–7), having recorded the site from the air (1930: 276).
The camp lies on undulating ground on the east side of the River Tay, north of Perth, and across the river from the Roman fort of Bertha. The camp of Scone Park lies only 300m to the south. The northern part of the west side of the camp lies along the mound known as Donald’s Bank, and from this point the ground drops away steeply to the river. The ground also drops away through Sheriffton Wood in the southern part of the camp.
Parts of all four sides are visible as cropmarks or earthworks, and the camp measures around 790m from north to south by about 700m transversely, enclosing 55.5ha (137 acres). Gates protected by tituli are visible in the centre of the north side and in the northern half of the east side; at both entrances the camp bows inwards. In Drumshogle Wood, the camp rampart survives as a low mound about 6m in width and up to 0.6m in height above an external ditch, which measures some 3m in width.
Crawford produced a map of the camp from the available evidence (1949: fig. 13), including a pronounced south-east corner, south of Sheriffton Wood. This was recorded as a cropmark on a photograph taken by Bradley in 1941 (1949: Pl. XI). A similar photograph was also taken by Bradley in 1943. Although the protruding corner is not stranger than the north-east corner at Raedykes, other similar marks in the same field raise questions over the Roman attribution of the feature (and it is not included in illus 140). T
here are no recorded excavations in the camp, but a stray Roman coin, probably Trajanic, was recovered from the interior in 1907 (Macdonald 1918: 232–3).
R H Jones.
