stirling-1963-vol-1/05_132

Transcription

No. 112 -- ROMAN MONUMENTS -- No. 112

[Plan inserted]
Fig. 33. Roman fort, Mumrills (No. 112); outline plan

although they had all been reduced practically to their
foundations. Four of these were situated on the via
principalis and comprised a large headquarters building
or principia (II on Fig. 34); two granaries (I and III),
one on each side of the principia; and an unusually
elaborate commandant's house or praetorium (IV) with
a private bathing establishment as at Camelon. The
other stone building, a separate bathhouse for the use
of the soldiers (VI), lay in the NE. quarter of the fort,
close to the N. rampart. As elsewhere on the Antonine
Wall the barracks were built of timber with wattle-and-
daub walls, but only in one case (V) was it found possible
to produce an intelligible plan, while search for the
corner-towers was equally unrewarding. It was clear,
however, that the fort had had a long and complicated
history, and from the evidence of structural changes,
notably in the principia and the praetorium, Macdonald
concluded that it had been twice destroyed and twice
rebuilt before it was finally abandoned towards the end
of the second century.

THE ANNEXE (Fig. 33). On the SW. side of the fort
there was a fortified annexe some 4 acres in extent
which housed an extensive civil settlement (vicus).
Nothing is known in detail about the lay-out of the vicus,
although widely scattered traces of wattle-and-daub
buildings, refuse-pits and ovens have been observed
from time to time. The excavations of 1958 showed that
on one occasion the buildings had been burnt down by
the retreating inhabitants when the fort was temporarily
evacuated; and that when re-occupation took place, the
debris, including much pottery and iron-work, was
dumped into the outermost of the four ditches on the W.
side of the fort. The other three ditches on this side of
the fort were also deliberately filled at this time, after
they had first been wrecked by gravel-digging, and were
never subsequently re-cut. Macdonald believed that the
site of the annexe had previously been occupied by a
6-acre temporary fort built by Agricola as one of the chain
of praesidia which he established on the Forth-Clyde
isthmus in A.D. 80 or 81, but the excavations of 1958
showed conclusively that this hypothesis can no longer
be sustained. If a temporary Agricolan post ever existed
at Mumrills, it is more ikely to have lain beneath the
Antonine fort. Further to the E. crop-markings on air-
photographs taken by Dr. J. K. S. St. Joseph (Nos.
DH 32 and DH 33 in the C.U.C.A.P.) have revealed
the presence of a rectilinear enclosure with rounded
corners (Fig. 33). The precise dimensions of the en-
closure cannot now be determined since the whole of
the S. side has been destroyed by erosion of the edge of
the steep escarpment overlooking the Westquarter Burn,
but it measured approximately 140 ft. from E. to W.
by at least 90 ft. from N. to S. and had an entrance in
the centre of the N. side. ¹ Traces of what may have
been a Roman building were found very close to, if

1 Excavation undertaken while this volume was in the press
has shown that the enclosure is of Antonine date.

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