(51) The fifth Report of the Royal Commission on Ancient and_Roman Britain in 1914

Historical Monuments in Scotland, _Inventory of Monuments in Galloway.

II. Stewartry of Kirkcudbright_ (Edinburgh, 1914) shows that the eastern

half of Galloway, like the western half described in the fourth Report

in 1912, contains nothing that can be called a 'Roman site' and very few

Roman remains of any sort. Indeed this eastern half, the land between

Dumfries and Newton Stewart, seems even poorer in such remains than the

district between Newton Stewart and the Irish Sea. Its only items are

some trifles of Samian, &c., found in the Borness Cave, and some iron

implements found in a bronze caldron in Carlingwark Loch. This result

is, of course, contrary to the views of older Scottish writers like

Skene, who talked of 'numerous Roman camps and stations' in Galloway,

but it will surprise no recent student. Probably the Romans never got

far west of a line roughly coinciding with that of the Caledonian

Railway from Carlisle by Carstairs to Glasgow. Their failure or omission

to hold the south-west weakened the left flank and rear of their

position on the Wall of Pius and helped materially to shorten their

dominion in Scotland in the second century.

(52) In the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_

for 1913-4 (vol. xlviii) Mr. J. M. Corrie describes some polishers and

other small objects found casually at Newstead (p. 338), and Dr.

Macdonald expands (p. 395) the account of the Balcreggan hoard which he

had contributed to the _Scotsman_ (my Report for 1913, p. 11). Mr. A. O.

Curle (p. 161) records the discovery and exploration of a vitrified fort

at the Mote of Mark near Dalbeattie (Kirkcudbright), and the discovery

in it of two clearly Roman potsherds. The main body of the finds made

here seem to belong to the ninth century; whether any of them can be

earlier than has been thought, I am not competent to decide.

(53) The well-known and remarkable earthworks at Birrenswark, near

Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire, have long been explained as a Roman

circumvallation[13] or at least as siege-works round a native hill-fort.

In 1913 they were visited by Prof. Schulten, of Erlangen, the excavator

of a Roman circumvallation round the Spanish fortress of Numantia; they

naturally interested him, and he has now described them for German

readers (_Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum_, xxxiii, 1914,

pp. 607-17) and added some remarks on their date. His description is

clear and readable; his chronological arguments are less satisfactory.

He adopts[14] the view generally adopted by English archaeologists

(except Roy) for the last two centuries, that these camps date from

Agricola; he supports this old conclusion by reasons which are in part

novel. I may summarize his position thus: Two Roman roads led from the

Tyne and the Solway to Caledonia, an eastern road by Corbridge and

Newstead, and a western one by Annandale and Upper Clydesdale. On the

eastern road, a little north of Newstead, is the camp of Channelkirk;

on the western are the three camps of Torwood Moor (near Lockerbie),

Tassie's Holm (north of Moffat), and Cleghorn in Clydesdale, near

Carstairs. These four camps are--so far as preserved--of the same size,

1,250 × 1,800 feet; they all have six gates (two in each of the longer

sides); they all have traverses in front of the gates; lastly, Torwood

Moor is fourteen Roman miles, a day's march, from Tassie's Holm, and

that is twenty-eight miles from Cleghorn. Plainly they belong to the

same date. Further, Agricola is the only Roman general who used both

eastern and western routes together; accordingly, these camps date from

him. Finally, as Birrenswark is near Torwood Moor, it too must be

Agricolan.

[Footnote 13: It is proper to add a warning that the traces of the

'circumvallation' are dim, and high authorities like Dr. Macdonald are

sceptical about them. The two camps are, however, certain, and there

must have been communication between them of some sort, if they were

occupied at the same time.]

[Footnote 14: No doubt it is by oversight that Dr. Schulten omits to

state that the view which he is supporting is the ordinary view and not

his own.]

Dr. Schulten has not advanced matters by this speculation. His first

point, that the four camps are coeval, and his reasons for that idea,

are mainly taken from Roy--he does not make this clear in his paper.

But he has not heeded Roy's warnings that the reasons are not cogent.

Actually, they are very weak. At Channelkirk, only two sides of a camp

remained in Roy's time; they measured not 1,250 × 1,800 feet but

1,330 × 1,660 feet, and the longer side had one gate in the middle,

not two; to-day, next to nothing is visible. At Tassie's Holm there

was only a corner of a perhaps quite small earthwork--not necessarily

Roman--and the distance to Torwood Moor is nearer twenty than fourteen

Roman miles. At Torwood Moor only one side, 1,780 feet long with two

gates, was clear in Roy's time; the width of the camp is unknown.

Cleghorn seems to have been fairly complete, but modern measurers

give its size as 1,000 × 1,700 feet. Dr. Schulten builds on imaginary

foundations when he calls these four camps coeval. He has not even proof

that there were four camps.

Nor is his reason any more convincing for assigning these camps, and

Birrenswark with them, to Agricola. Here he parts company from Roy and

adduces an argument of his own--that Agricola was the only general who

used both eastern and western routes. That is a mere assertion, unproven

and improbable. Roman generals were operating in Scotland in the reigns

of Pius and Marcus (A.D. 140-80) and Septimius Severus; if there were

two routes, it is merely arbitrary to limit these men to the eastern

route. As a matter of fact, the history of the western route is rather

obscure; doubts have been thrown on its very existence north of Birrens.

But if it did exist, the sites most obviously connected with it are the

second-century sites of Birrens, Lyne, and Carstairs; at Birrenswark

itself the only definitely datable finds, four coins, include two issues

of Trajan.[15]

[Footnote 15: Gordon, p. 184, _Minutes of the Soc. Antiq._ i. 183

(2 February, 1725). It has been suggested that Gordon mixed up Birrens

and Birrenswark. But though the Soc. Antiq. Minutes only describe the

coins as 'found in a Roman camp in Annandale, ... the first Roman camp

to be seen in Scotland', Gordon obviously knew more than the Minutes

contain--he gives, e.g. the name of a local antiquary who noted the

find--and the distinction between the 'town' (as it was then thought)

of Middelby (as it was then called) and the camp of Burnswork, was well

recognized in his time.]

The truth is that the question is more complex than Dr. Schulten has

realized. Possibly it is not ripe for solution. I have myself ventured,

in previous publications, to date Birrenswark to Agricola--for reasons

quite different from those of Dr. Schulten. But I would emphasize that

we need, both there and at many earth-camps, full archaeological use of

the spade. The circumstances of the hour are unfavourable to that

altogether.

POSTSCRIPT

_Herefordshire_

(54) As I go to press, I receive the _Transactions of the Woolhope

Naturalists' Field Club_ for 1908-11 (Hereford, 1914), a volume

which, despite the date on its title-page, does not appear to have been

actually issued till April 1915. It contains on pp. 68-73 and 105-9 two

illustrated papers on three Roman roads of Herefordshire--Stone Street,

the puzzling road near Leominster, and Blackwardine, the itinerary

route between Gloucester and Monmouth. The find made at Donnington

in 1906, which is explained on p. 69 as a 'villa' and on p. 109 as an

agrimensorial pit--this latter an impossibility--was, I think, really

a kiln, though there may have been a dwelling-house near. The most

interesting of the Roman finds made lately in Herefordshire, those of

Kenchester, do not come into this volume, but belong in point of date

to the volume which will succeed it.

[Illustration: FIG. 30. GELLYGAER. STONE PACKING FOR A WOODEN POSTHOLE

IN THE VERANDAH OF THE BARRACKS (FIG. 29 E)]

APPENDIX: LIST OF PERIODICALS

The following list enumerates the archaeological and other periodicals

published in these islands which sometimes or often contain noteworthy

articles relating to Roman Britain. Those which contained such articles

in 1914 are marked by an asterisk, and references are given in square

brackets to the numbered paragraphs in the preceding section (pp.

38-63).

1. PERIODICALS NOT CONNECTED WITH SPECIAL DISTRICTS

_Archaeologia_ (Society of Antiquaries of London).

*_Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London_

[see 30, 37, 44, 45].

_English Historical Review_ (London).

_Scottish Historical Review_ (Glasgow).

*_Numismatic Chronicle_ (London)

[see 8].

_British Numismatic Journal_ (London).

*_Journal of Roman Studies_ (London)

[see 28].

*_Archaeological Journal_ (Royal Archaeological Institute, London)

[see 2].

*_Journal of the British Archaeological Association_ (London)

[see 17, 24, 30].

*_Antiquary_ (London)

[see 3, 32].

_Athenaeum_ (London).

_Architectural Review_ (London).

2. PERIODICALS DEALING PRIMARILY WITH SPECIAL DISTRICTS

BERKSHIRE.

*_Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Archaeological Journal_ (Reading)

[see 5].

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.

_Records of Buckinghamshire_ (Aylesbury). See also Berks.

CAMBRIDGESHIRE.

_Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society_ (Cambridge).

_Proceedings of the Cambridge and Huntingdonshire Archaeological

Society_ (Ely).

CHESHIRE.

_Journal of the Architectural, Archaeological, and Historic Society

of Chester and North Wales_ (Chester).