Kair House

Kair House NO 767 766 NO77NE 1

Cropmarks reveal a temporary camp, possibly the most northerly of the series associated with the campaigns of the emperor Septimius Severus (c. AD 208-11), straddling the summit of a prominent hill above the left bank of the Bervie Water opposite Fordoun. A rough parallelogram on plan, it measures some 870m by 600m and encloses an area of about 52ha within which both Kair House and Mains of Kair farmsteading now stand. The only gates to be definitely identified are those on the NNE and SSW sides, each guarded by a titulum; to the NE of Mains of Kair the rampart appears to survive as a slight earthwork.

RCAHMS 1982, visited October 1981

(St Joseph 1951, 65; St Joseph 1965, 83; St Joseph 1973, 233; Maxwell 1980, 40)

NO 7688 7651 (centre) Kair House is located within the perimeter of a 120 acre Roman marching camp, believed to be of Severan date. An underground electricity cable was to be installed to run from Kair House across a field to the N, on a SSW-NNE alignment. A watching brief in April 2004 located a large cut feature 35m NNE of Kair House, apparently containing within it the tumbled remains of an earth bank with a drystone facing. A trench was excavated into these features and exposed what appeared to be a ditch, 4.5m across and 1.45m deep, with a U-shaped profile, partially backfilled with random whinstone rubble. No artefacts were recovered, but soil samples were taken.

The location of the ditch within the camp perimeter tends against regarding it as a part of the Roman defences, and it was thought more likely that this represented a ha-ha associated with Kair House. However, radiocarbon dating of a sample taken from the primary fill of the ditch suggests a calibrated date of AD 1250 (95.4% probability). The possibility of a previously unknown medieval structure having existed on the site, perhaps a moated house, must therefore be given serious consideration.

Archive to be deposited in the NMRS.

Sponsor: Scottish & Southern Energy plc.

C Fyles 2004

The camp at Kair House in the Howe of the Mearns was first recorded from the air by St Joseph in 1945 (St Joseph 1951a: 65), although the area had been noted as a potential site for the Roman army by Roy (1793: 86–7). Subsequent aerial survey has recorded most of all four sides as cropmarks. The camp lies along the south-west part of a small hill above the Bervie Water, some 15km from the coast at Inverbervie. It is also located almost midway between the large camps of Raedykes and Balmakewan.

The camp measures around 870m from north-east to south-west by about 600m transversely, enclosing an area of some 53.5ha (132 acres). A titulus is clearly visible in the centre of the south-west side, and a possible titulus in the north-east side, just to the west of the road. Given the size of the camp, it is assumed that it probably had six gates. Most of the camp lies in arable fields, but a small stretch of upstanding rampart survives on the north-east side: 18m survives in a small grass field and a further 11m in a conifer plantation; any accompanying ditch could not be traced. The rampart is spread about 3.7m wide and measures 0.3m high in the plantation, and is 5.4m wide and up to 1.1m high in the grass, although it is increasingly disturbed and reduced as it approaches the road.

R H Jones.