| More information : The large Roman temporary camp known as ‘Silloans’, recorded on the west side of Sills Burn and located astride the road of Dere Street. The earthworks survive, though are overlain in places by later field boundaries.
(NT 8220080) A large temporary Roman camp was discovered at Silloans by air photography in 1937. It lies about 150 yards west of Sills Burn on a gently sloping shelf hardly wide enough to contain it. There is a steep fall towards the SW angle which curves very irregularly to avoid boggy ground. The camp is large enough to hold an expeditionary force. The camp is bisected by Dere Street which passes through the north and south gates. The north side measures 1220 feet, the south 1129 feet, the west 1710 feet and the east 1700 feet. East and west gates leave three fifths of the area to the south showing that the camp faced northwards. The gates are 58 and 45 feet wide respectively, protected by traverses. Dere Street changes direction at the gates in order to pass through them. This infers that the camp preceded the Agricolan road and as such ranks as one of the early camps in Northern Britain (1).
The rampart now measures about 12 feet in width and is accompanied by a ditch 10 to 12 feet wide. Where the defences have not been mutilated by drainage and modern fences the vertical distance between rampart-top and ditch-bottom is between 3 1/2 - 6 feet. The rampart is constructed from the upcast of the ditch. The camp would appear to belong to the first Roman invasion of Scotland, possibly for a force of two legions (2).
(NT 82200080) Remains of rectangular earthwork with rounded corners, with an entrance on the east side and possible entrance on the west side (3).
Remains of a Roman temporary camp, situated at approximately 800 feet above OD, upon a gentle SE facing slope, with a local SW slope in the SW corner. The site is well supplied with fresh water supplies from streams closely adjacent to the W, S and E sides, and is on pasture land. The camp, rectangular in plan, with rounded corners, consisted of an earth and stone bank with an outer ditch. Description by Authority 1 is correct, though the entrance in the W side cannot now be located. Both traverses can be traced (4).
This camp is situated in an active Royal Artillery Firing Range, but is protected from damage by War Department signs noting its antiquity (5).
Surveyed at 6" Scale (6).
No change since report of 16.5.70. Surveyed at 1:10 000 on MSD (7).
This camp has been re-assessed in connection with RCHME's survey and publication of Roman Camps in England. The following descriptive account is taken from the published text. The earthworks of a large camp were discovered from the air in 1937 Richmond and St Joseph 1941 (8a) on the W bank of the Sills Burn, between Silloans Farm and a smaller unnamed stream that rises on the S slopes of Bellshiel Law. The camp lies on the broad summit of a gentle spur which extends from approximately the NW corner of the camp at about 255m above OD, the highest point within the earthworks, to the centre of its S side which lies along a local crest. Another minor crest lies from N to S on the long axis of the camp, the line occupied by Dere Street. The two halves of the camp, on either side of the Roman road, are not, therefore, inter-visible from one another; the N end of the E rampart is at the foot of the hillside and the SW angle had to be adapted in order to avoid the adjacent stream. There are good views from the S rampart down the valley to the S, and those to the E are to the watershed, 2km away. However to the SW, NW and N, they are blocked at a distance of about 500m by the outer flanks of Bellshiel Law.
The camp encloses an area of about 18.4ha (45.4 acres). It occupies the last position up the valley of the Sills Burn that could accommodate a camp of this size. Although only 2km from the fort at High Rochester (Bremenium), the camp seems to have faced N, along Dere Street and away from the fort, an option that may have been determined partly by the topography. Despite the awkward lie of the land, the NE, NW and SE corners of the camp are right angles, but at the site of the W gate the W defences were realigned a few degrees to the E. This may have resulted from an initial miscalculation in layout which, without the realignment, would have left the SW corner in the shallow bed of the stream that passes close to the camp at this point.
The defences are in varying states of preservation. The N rampart stands to an average height of 0.5m but the ditch is now no more than 0.3m deep and for some distance its former presence is marked only by a change in the vegetation. To the E of Dere Street the pasture within the interior of the camp has been improved. The internal scarp of the rampart has been almost levelled and the ditch is largely silted up. A small pocket of peat has built up immediately to the S of the E gate, masking the defences. This E side of the camp is best preserved to the S of the road to Holystone, where the outer and inner scarps of the rampart survive to heights of 1.0m and 0.3m respectively, and where the outer scarp of the ditch is 0.3 m high.
On the S side of the camp the earthworks are markedly different in character. The line chosen for them, ascending the gentle hillside, lies along a local crest line. To the E of Dere Street the Roman earthworks have been superseded by a later boundary bank 0.6m high. The gully to the S is the result of the natural erosion of the Roman ditch to a depth of 0.7m. There may be a vestige of the rampart, perhaps as much as 0.4 m high, surviving on the N lip of the gully and now represented as a berm between it and the boundary bank. At the point where it is crossed by Dere Street, this bank curves away to the NW, revealing the Roman defences once again. The rampart here stands up to 1.1m high externally and 0.3m high internally, and the ditch is up to 0.5m deep. In addition to the realignment of the W side, the presence of the stream seems to have called for another minor revision of the SW corner. Although the other three rounded angles of the camp have relatively small radii, the surviving rampart here slices abruptly across the usual arc in an awkward fashion.
Along the S section of the W side the rampart is still well preserved, although the ditch has been utilised as a modern drain. Farther N, however, the rampart and the ditch fade out as the curving line of the boundary bank approaches from the SE. Thereafter, as far as the NW corner, this bank occupies the line of the Roman rampart and a drain has scoured out part of the earlier ditch. The resulting earthworks are sinuous and altogether more irregular in their construction.
The modern road, following the line of Dere Street, crosses the N and S defences at their central point. The road changes direction slightly at the S crest but is realigned about 80m outside the N rampart. This observation is directly contrary to the argument advanced by Richmond (Richmond and St Joseph 1941, 113 (see Authority 8a).
The chronological relationship between the road and the camp cannot be established without excavation, although gates presumably existed at these intersections. There was certainly a single gate in each of the E and W sides. A gap in the rampart survives on the E, guarded by an eroded bar-shaped traverse. Hill-wash has reduced the inner scarp of the traverse and the outer scarp of the ditch to a height of 0.1m but the outer scarp of the traverse stands 1.0m high. The causeway for the W gate has been cut through for the drain associated with the boundary bank that overlies the rampart. The traverse, however, is well preserved, standing 0.4m high internally and 0.8m above the bottom of its ditch, which is 0.3m deep.
A stretch of the N defences has been destroyed by a turning circle, and drains cut the E side of the camp. The curving boundary along the W side and around the SW angle is studded with a series of late 18th-century or early 19th-century boundary stones, marking the division between the infield land of Silloans and the Birdhope Craig estate to the W (NRO ZHE 14/1 (8b)). Full information is included in the NMR Archive (8).
Additional reference (9).
Published reference (10).
Pencil survey (11).
Silloans Roman temporary camp, as visible on aerial photography and lidar imagery, matches the descriptions from Authorities 1-11. The majority of the perimeter rampart and ditch survive as earthworks on the latest 2016 imagery, though augmented in places by later field boundaries and drainage ditches. The section of the northern ditch under a modern military turning circle, and the eastern entrance’s embanked outer traverse are visible on historic aerial photography, though have been levelled by the 21st century. The camp measures 515 x 365m enclosing an area of 18.4ha. The camp was mapped as part of a PhD project at the University of York, in collaboration with the Historic England aerial investigation and mapping team. (12-14).
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