Roman camp's occupiers may have built the Antonine Wall

Published on Friday 13 April 2007 00:11

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have found a camp thought to have been built to accommodate Roman construction workers who constructed the Antonine Wall.

It was discovered in a dig following the demolition of the former OKI factory at Tollpark, near Castlecary, North Lanarkshire.

Ross White of CFA Archaeology said the rectangular camp's outline was first identified in cropmarks on aerial photographs taken in the late 1940s, before the development of the area.

The camp was situated about 400 metres south of the Antonine Wall and midway between the Roman forts at Westerwood and Castlecary.

Mr White's report on the find, published in the Scottish Archaeological News yesterday, reveals two possible entrances and the likelihood of a fortifying rampart.

"The camp is typically Roman and is assumed to be associated with the construction of the Antonine Wall," he said.

"Depending on the precise date at which it was built, it may have been used by Roman scouting parties looking for the best place to build the wall itself and monitoring the locals.

"It would then have been used to accommodate those building the wall."

Construction of the Antonine Wall began in 142, during the reign of Antoninus Pius. It stretches 37 miles from Old Kilpatrick in West Dunbartonshire on the Firth of Clyde to Bo'ness, Falkirk, on the Firth of Forth. The wall was intended to replace the superior Hadrian's Wall, 100 miles south.