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Continued entries/extra info

[Page] 84

County Dumbarton -- Old Kilpatrick Parish


Roman Wall Continued

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From the Station at Duntocher to the
termination at the Chapel Hill Station -
the last of the Wall Stations, as it is called by the best writers on
the subject, the track of the Ditch is generally faint on the Farms
of Auchentoshan Carleith & N. [North] Dalnotter, and the connection or continuation is entirely obliterated from the field at Sandyford
to Chapel Hill - a distance of nearly a mile. The general belief among the people is that the wall was
continued to "Dunglass Castle" on the Clyde. Of the Military Way in this Parish there is little known. Some traces of what
appears to be remains of it from its distance from the line of wall - the Ditch, are found when ploughing
on the farms of Braidfield & Auchentoshan. At Sandyford a part of the regular Causeway was found
about six years ago in clearing away an old T.P. [Turn Pike] Road, which appears to have been on the Military Way.
It is not known by tradition or otherwise in the locality what course or line the Military Way took westwards, from the
termination of the Wall at Chapel Hill, to the Roman Town on the Leven at Dumbarton, which, it is
said by some writers, was protected by a chain of Forts. Not a single Station between Chapel
Hill & Dumbarton has been identified, nor is anything known of the sites of such to the oldest
& most respectable authorities in the Parish. In the "Romana" Page 282 with reference to the
termination of the Wall, and, of the line of Forts which protected the communication between Chapel
Hill Station & the Roman Town on the Leven at Dumbarton, it says, "It has been already
remarked, that the consecutive works of the Wall terminated, in all probability, at West Kilpatrick. The narrow
belt of land which lies between that village & the mouth of the river Leven was certainly by no means well calculated
for the position of such an entrenchment - overlooked as it is, for a great part of the distance, by a range of
considerable heights, which at some points, encroach very closely upon the River Clyde. The low grounds
immediately around Dumbarton Castle were, no doubt, at the distant end of the Roman occupation, either
entirely submerged, or liable to be so with every tide; even within these few centuries the rock was
frequently surrounded by water; from which we may conclude that in ancient times the alluvial plain
between Dumbarton & Dunglass was entirely of a marshy character, & incapable of being traversed by
a continuous ditch and rampart. It would appear, however, that along this plain the Romans had
constructed a line of detached Forts; doubtless with the double object of securing the passage of the
river, & of protecting the line of communication between their municipal town on the Leven, & the
mural Station of West Kilpatrick. With regard to those garrison posts which united the supposed
extremity of the Wall with the town of Theodosia, we learn that, in the year 1686, Dr. [Doctor] Irvine observed
as follows: - At the Town of Dumbarton, the remains of a great Roman Fort - the vestiges
of another at the Castle, half a mile distant - those of a third at the foot of Dumbuck Hill (in Old Kil[patrick])
a mile more to the last - of a fourth at Dunglass - and of a fifth on the Chapel Hill, at West
Kilpatrick, which was we conceive the last of the Stations per lineam valli. He makes no
mention of any traces of the ditch as being visible between that point & the River Leven; nor can we
believe that such had ever existed, notwithstanding what Bishop Gibson states in his edition of Camden;
where it is roundly asserted, without any attempt at proof, that the Wall had been continued as far as Dumbarton.
Not a vestige now remains either of these Forts or of the Military Way which passed in their vicinity; although, about
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