Cargill

NO 1633 3769. There are no traces of this fortlet visible on the ground. The site lies in arable ground at the top of a gradual slope towards the River Isla. Sited from St Joseph APs and ground control/ inspection.

Visited by OS (WDJ) 26 February 1969

On the summit of a low ridge overlooking the left bank of the River Isla, about 320m NE of Cargill Mains farmhouse, there is a Roman fortlet of presumed Flavian date. It was identified from the air by Eric Bradley in the summer of 1941, when cropmarks revealed the defences of a rectangular enclosure measuring approximately 84m by 56m within a double ditch (c. 0.5ha); no readily recognisable traces survive above ground, however.

Trial-excavation of the fortlet by Professor St Joseph in 1965 suggested that the site had been deliberately abandoned after a brief period of occupation, but no internal structures were identified and no closely datable artefacts were recovered. Nevertheless, the manner in which the ditches unite on either side of the two entrances (situated off-centre in the NW and SE sides) makes it almost certain that the post was constructed during, or shortly after, the governorship of Agricola (c.AD 77-83).

Information from RCAHMS (JRS) 9 December 1992.

I A Richmond 1943; J K St Joseph 1965.

(NO 163 376) A large-scale resistivity and magnetometer survey greatly clarified the form of the Roman fortlet defences, which were already known from the air. The site proved to be 0.5ha (1.24 acres) in internal area, with 'parrot beak'-style ditch entrance breaks for gates in its N and S sides. Four ring features, thought to be roundhouses, were already known from the air, just to the SW of the Roman site. The survey produced a further 15 such structures, along with a crescent-shaped underground structure which appears to be stone-lined and seems likely to represent a souterrain. A linear high-resistance feature just to the S of the fortlet lines up on the via principalis of the larger Cargill fort, c 265m to the E, and may represent a Roman road.

D J Woolliscroft and B Hoffman 2003

Fieldwalking on the site produced no Roman pottery, but a number of shards of late 1st-century bottle glass (which would match the Flavian date of the fortlet) were recovered, along with one shard of mid-2nd-century glass. The site also yielded a block of Roman raw glass (suggesting evidence of glassworking), along with an Iron Age lipped terret ring. The latter is a southern English type, of which the only other example found in Scotland comes from the Roman fort of Newstead.

Sponsor: Roman Gask Project.

D J Woolliscroft and B Hoffman 2003

(NO 163 376) Magnetometry survey.

D J Woolliscroft and B Hoffman 2003

(NO 163 376) Resistivity survey.

D J Woolliscroft and B Hoffman 2003