Bonnytown

The alleged camp at Bonnytown was recorded from the air by St Joseph in 1962 (St Joseph 1965: 82), lying on level ground only 2.5km from the Fife coast at St Andrews Bay, and some 18km east of the nearest confirmed camp at Edenwood near Cupar.

There are numerous linear cropmarks in and around the camp, many of which are probably field drains, but this confuses the cropmark evidence. What appears to be the north-east side (some 293m in length) together with the north and east corners is detectable, but no entrance gap is obvious. Some 350m of the south-east side is also visible, with further linear cropmarks perhaps suggesting up to 590m might be visible. St Joseph records a rounded south angle in the field just to the south of Bonnytown farm (RCAHMS DC 37264), but this is not clearly visible as such on the air photographs. There is a linear cropmark running in the field, close to its boundary, some 670m from the north-east side.

St Joseph conducted excavations on the south-east side and north angle in 1966, recording that the ditch on the south-east side was V-shaped, 1m wide and 0.45m deep, with a drain inserted exactly at the base of the ditch. Elsewhere on this side, the ditch was up to 0.9m deep. At the north angle, the ditch was also 1m wide and up to 0.7m deep (RCAHMS St Joseph Collection: Notebook 4). The Ordnance Survey recorded that excavations carried out in 1967 by the Dundee University Archaeology Group proved the existence of the Roman camp (OS Recorder 1968), but these may be the same as St Joseph’s excavations of 1966. (His excavations were carried out with G Rickman, D K Faulks, J J Robertson & D Dunn, and these may be members of the Dundee University Archaeology Group – no further information is available.) Maxwell has questioned this site as a camp (pers comm) and indeed the aerial photographic evidence is not wholly convincing. Further work may elucidate the cropmark evidence.

R H Jones.