stirling-1963-vol-1/05_135

Transcription

No. 114 -- ROMAN MONUMENTS -- No. 115
114. Roman Fortlet, Watling Lodge (Site). At the
villa known as Watling Lodge, roughly half-way between
the forts at Falkirk (No. 113) and Rough Castle (No. 115),
a gap in the Antonine Wall gave passage to the main
Roman road (No. 124) that led to Camelon and beyond.
Protecting the gap there was a small fort or block-house
which was discovered in 1894 but is now completely
buried beneath the garden of the villa. It was attached
to the S. side of the Antonine Rampart, and appears
to have measured about 130 ft. from E. to W. by about
100 ft. from N. to S. within a rampart which had a stone
foundation some 15 ft. in thickness. ¹ Similar fortlets
have since been found elsewhere on the Wall, and it may
well be that the series extended, at regular intervals, for
the whole length of the barrier (Introduction, p. 34).

862798 -- NS 87 NE (unnoted) -- 29 October 1958

115. Roman Fort, Rough Castle. Rough Castle, the
best preserved of the forts on the Antonine Wall, is
situated one mile E. of Bonnybridge, in a belt of rough
moorland which is now largely overgrown with trees
and bracken. Guarding the point where the Rowan Tree
Burn breaks through the ridge on which the Wall stands,
the fort is protected by the deep ravine of the burn on
the W., by a longer and more gentle descent to the floor
of the Carron Valley on the N., and by a shallow trough
of marshy ground to the S. Thus the only easy access
is from the E., where a level space immediately outside
the defences is occupied by a relatively large annexe.
In 1903 extensive excavations were undertaken in both
the fort and the annexe, ² and in 1932-3 the defences of
both works were re-examined by Sir George Macdonald. ³
Inevitably these excavations left a number of problems
unsolved, and now that the site has been placed under
the guardianship of the Ministry of Works it is being
systematically explored afresh as part of a planned
programme of conservation. ⁴
The fort is square on plan (Fig. 38), and, apart from
Duntocher, is the smallest known fort on the Antonine
Wall: it measures only 215 ft. each way within the rampart
and has an internal area of a little over one acre. The
northern defence was formed by the Wall itself and its
Ditch, while about 30 yds. beyond the Ditch a unique
series of defensive pits, or lilia, was found in 1903.
The pits, some of which are still visible at the present
time, were arranged in ten parallel rows, each pit
being about 7 ft. long by 3 ft. broad at the top and
2 1/2 ft. deep. On the other three sides the fort rampart was
built of turf, laid on a stone foundation 20 ft. in thick-
ness, and was fronted by two ditches. A short length of a
third ditch, with an upcast mound on the outer lip, was
added near the foot of the slope on the W. side. There
were four gates, the N. one being double, and their
arrangement shows that the fort faced N. Initially the
Military Way appears to have run from E. to W. directly
through the fort, serving as the via principalis, but
subsequently a by-pass was constructed to skirt the
defences on the S., as shown in Fig. 38. Inside the fort
the remains of three stone buildings were uncovered in
1903. On these, the headquarters building (Fig. 38, I),
in the centre of the fort, measured 75 ft. by 44 ft. over
the walls: it seems to have had only three rooms at the
back instead of the usual five, and beneath the floor of
the central room (sacellum) there was a small cellar
which served as the strong-room for the regimental
funds. From the ruins of the principia came three
fragments of an inscribed tablet (Number i infra)
commemorating the erection of the building by the Sixth
Cohort of Nervii. Immediately to the W. of the head-
quarters building there was a granary (II) with a loading-
platform at the N. end, and beyond this again lay the
commandant's house (III), a large, rectangular structure
consisting of a series of rooms ranged round an open
courtyard. No other buildings were recognised inside the
fort in 1903, but during the current excavations post-
holes of timber-framed buildings, presumably barracks,
have been found in the NW. quarter.
The annexe was slightly larger than the fort and was
defended on the exposed sides by a rampart 15 ft. in
thickness, in front of which there were three ditches on
the E. and a single ditch on the S. As originally designed,
it had a gateway in the E. side to admit the Military Way,
but Macdonald thought that this had subsequently been
closed and replaced by an entrance at the SW. corner.
The only structures which have been identified in the
annexe are a bath-house (IV), and, in the NW. corner,
an oblong, cobbled enclosure, bounded on the S. and E.
by a small ditch and measuring about 130 ft. by 60 ft.
Macdonald suggested that this enclosure might have been
used in the first instance as a barrack-yard and later for
storage, but its purpose is obscure, and it is difficult to
understand why it should have been considered necessary
to protect it by a ditch if it was already contained within
the annexe defences. Without more specific evidence it
would, however, be rash to conclude that the enclosure
is analogous to the small fortified post which immediately
preceded the fort at Duntocher, and which remained in
use when the fort was built alongside it. ⁵
That the fort at Rough Castle did not enjoy an un-
broken occupation is suggested by structural changes
present in the stone buildings examined in 1903.
Whether there were, in fact, three separate Antonine
occupations, as Macdonald believed, is however an open
question, since re-examination of the rampart on the
N. and W. sides of the fort has not confirmed his
hypothesis that it was thickened on two successive
occasions, and his analysis of the structural sequence
represented by the annexe defences is largely conjectural.
Recent research has also materially weakened the case

1 R.W.S., 344-5 and fig. 51.
2 P.S.A.S., xxxix (1904-5), 442-99.
3 Ibid., lxvii (1932-3), 243 ff.
4 The Commissioners are indebted to the Ancient Monu-
ments Inspectorate, through Mr. Iain MacIvor for information
about these latest excavations in advance of publication.
5 Robertson, A. S., An Antonine Fort, Golden Hill, Duntocher,
fig. 4.

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