stirling-1963-vol-1/05_150

Transcription

No. 124 -- ROMAN MONUMENTS -- No.124
Rev. Christopher Tait, minister of Kincardine, Perth-
shire, who mentions "a road, supposed to be Roman
that passes between the moss [i.e. Kincardine Moss] and
the River Teith. The vestiges of this -- road have been
traced, from about four miles north-west of the bridge
of Dript, where formerly there was a ford, across the
river [i.e. the Forth], south-east by Torwood and Larbert,
to Camelon on the wall. This road is laid about a foot
deep with gravel, under which, in some places, is also a
layer of stones, and it appears to have been about twenty
feet wide -- The direction of it, after it crosses the ford
at Dript, is in a line that points north-west to the Pass
of Leny, the chief avenue to the Highlands on this side."
This record seems reasonable, as Bochastle, unlike
Fendoch, seems to have continued in occupation during
the later Flavian period, when the Roman road-system
in Scotland was taking shape; and it would imply that a
road, which can hardly have been other than continuous
with the one from Camelon to Stirling, ran on to cross
the Forth at Drip (770956), just above the inflow of
the Teith, and thence followed a line north-westwards
approximating to that of the modern highway A 84.
The furthest point to which Tait's record carries it
would be near Kincardine Church (718989).
The records of the north-going road, however, are
not free from contradictions. Nimmo, the most reliable
observer, states ¹ that it "takes a direction westward",
though without specifying whence, "to a ford, called the
Drip, near Craigforth", adding that "very plain traces
of it are discernible at a farmhouse, which, together with
its offices and yards, is situated on the very summit
thereof". ² This farmhouse is "not far from a place
called Kildean". In a later passage ³ he says that the road
turned northwards from Drip, by Keir, to Dunblane,
where it again made its appearance. This would, of
course, imply that the Teith was crossed separately, at
some point rather higher up, an arrangement which
would appear reasonable enough if the Forth had in any
case to be crossed at Drip for the sake of access to
Bochastle. Indeed, a route which crossed the Forth at
Drip, and then the Teith perhaps somewhere near Old
Keir (758975), might have had some advantage over a
more direct one, if it avoided marshes in the Carse of
Lecropt and backwaters where the Allan Water joins the
Forth.
In conflict, however, with Nimmo's account are a
statement by Maitland and the evidence of Edgar's map;
though caution is necessary here as Maitland does not
rank high as a reporter of Roman antiquities and Edgar
may well have been misled by the remains of a mediaeval
road (infra). Maitland, writing twenty years before
Nimmo, says ⁴ that the Roman road, after leaving the
fort, i.e. the King's Knot site, "passed on the western
side of Stirling-castle, by the way at present called the
Craigforth-road or causeway, to a place about half a
mile bewest the said castle, on the southern side of the
river Forth. That the Romans trajectus or ferry was at
this place, I think is demonstrable, by the course of the
military way on both sides (of) the said river --" Edgar,
on the other hand, marks the road as crossing the Forth
at a point well over a mile from Stirling Castle, the
crossing-place being easy to identify by its position on a
large meander of the Forth. From this crossing it strikes
N. past the modern farms of Cottonhaugh and Westleys,
by-passing what is shown as a swamp S.E. of Lecropt
Church, and continues its northward course W. of the
Allan Water. This last stretch would coincide with the
corresponding portion of the road as given by Nimmo
(supra); and would also pass close to the sites of two
temporary camps, ⁵ though no connection between road
and camps need necessarily be inferred.
The evidence thus seems insufficient to support any
firm conclusion, and it is further quite possible that there
may have been two north roads, an early one which
branched from the Bochastle route beyond Drip, and a
later one, perhaps built in the Antonine period when
Bochastle was no longer garrisoned, which crossed the
Forth further downstream. A good analogy for the
proposed early arrangement would be the manner in
which the Fosse Way approaching Cirencester from the
N. suddenly diverges from the direct line in order to
make contact with Akeman Street, and thereby saves a
considerable length of road-building.

THE ROUTE IN POST-ROMAN TIMES. There is good
reason to believe that this route, or one which approx-
imated to it, continued in use in mediaeval and later
times. For example, a magna strata ran from St. Ninians
to Stirling in the 12 century ⁶; the movements of the
armies on the day before the Battle of Bannockburn (1314)
imply the existence of a road between Falkirk and Stirling
on the Roman line ⁷; the Gough map, of about 1360, notes
"Hic passagium de Drippis" not at the modern Drip
Bridge but on the same meander as Edgar's crossing-
place; John Harding, in the 15th century, knew of Drip
ford as an alternative to the bridge at Stirling ⁸; Pitscottie,
writing about the middle of the 16th century, evidently
knew of a bridge over the Carron, again on what seems
to have been the Falkirk-Stirling route, and regarded it
as having existed in 1488 ⁹; and in 1651 the bridge at
Larbert was defended with a strong-point (cf. No. 462).
Actual traces of post-Roman use are scanty, but hollow
tracks can be seen on the right bank of the Tor Burn,
where one or two were cut into the Roman road-mound itself,
while another, which is deep and well marked, approaches
the burn a short distance downstream. Below this point
the burn enters a gully, where crossings would have been
impracticable, and at the bridge that carries the present-
day by-road from Larbert (833855) there are traces of
an old road winding down to a low-level bridge-site,

1 Op. cit., 23.
2 Ibid.
3 Op. cit., 24.
4 Maitland, History, i, 195.
5 Antiquity, xxv (1951), 95 f.
6 Cambuskenneth, p. 142.
7. P.S.A.S., xc (1956-7), 172.
8 Chronicle of John Harding, ed. Ellis, 423, quoted by Hume
Brown, Early Travellers in Scotland, 18.
9 Pitscottie, The Historie and Chronicles of Scotland, S.T.S.,
i, 206.

-- 115