| More information : A Roman temporary camp, Sills Burn North, was discovered by air-photography in 1934. It is situated on a hillock SW of a Silloans Farm. The east rampart has been ploughed out but short remaining segments of the NE and SE angles give its position. The north, west and south ramparts are respectively 448, 421 and 483 feet long. The rampart and ditch are each 11 ½ feet broad: The north and south gates lie west of the axis, while the west gate is central, showing that the camp faced Dere Street (1).
Sills Burn North camp encloses a little over 4 acres. A considerable part of the north side, near the NW angle has been dug away for gravel. The east rampart and gate have been entirely ploughed away but the other three gates each have internal clavicles. The north gate shown signs of having been blocked at an unknown date (2).
(NT 82540006) Remains of rectangular earthwork with rounded corners, and entrance on the west side (3).
Remains of a Roman temporary camp situated at approximately 720 feet above sea level upon a gentle SE slope, and above steep banks on the E side, which lead down to Sills Burn. The nearest present water supply is a small stream adjacent to the SW corner of the camp. Description of the remains by Authorities 1, 2 and 3 correct. (Camp now falls within an active Royal Artillery Firing Range, but is protected from further damage by War Department signs noting its antiquity) (4).
Surveyed at 6" scale (5).
Outside and adjacent to the south east corner of the camp are two stretches of low turf-covered earthen bank, with outer ditch, connected with a rounded south east corner. The banking is slight and more denuded than the earthworks of the camp itself though of similar appearance. (See Illustration). Rig and furrow has apparently destroyed this bank and ditch in the west as there are no traces of it continuing. In the north east where it approaches the main ditch, its extent is not clear and its exact relationship to the camp is impossible to ascertain, but there is a strong possibility that this is part of an earlier work. (NB An apparent extension of the north west corner visible on the air photograph is no more than a modern drain). Surveyed at 1:10 000 on MSD (6).
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. This is the most northerly of two contrasting rectangular camps constructed to the E of Dere Street on the gently sloping ground above the narrow haughland of the Sills Burn, between the fort at High Rochester (Bremenium) and the camp at Silloans. The views from this site are not particularly extensive, stretching westwards only to the Bellshiel ridge, northwards to the S rampart of Silloans camp and eastwards up Harelaw Cleugh. Down the little valley of the Sills Burn the view is slightly better, for High Rochester and the crest above the haughland of the Rede are both visible. Although well preserved in part, the defences and the interior of the camp, have been overlain by ridge-and-furrow; this is not shown in detail on the plan but its general layout and extent is indicated by the modern drains laid in some of the furrows.
The defences are best preserved along the W side where the rampart stands 0.9m high internally and 1.1m above the bottom of the ditch, which is 0.4m deep. The N side is overlain by a later earthen boundary bank which approaches the NW angle of the camp from the SW and extends across the gate. The ditch is less well preserved than on the W and has had a modern drain cut along its bottom; the material from this has been thrown up next to the rampart so as to create a slight ridge between the rampart and the outer scarp of the ditch.
The position of the NE corner of the camp is now totally obscured by the earthworks of a building and some small enclosures, and by the angle of a much larger enclosure, all of medieval and post-medieval date. Well-developed ridge-and-furrow, reversed-S in plan, has obliterated any surface traces of the E side, except for a short length of rampart close to the NE corner. Although somewhat mutilated this bank has acted as the headland for three cultivation ridges which run E towards the burn. The likely position of the ditch of the camp, connecting this fragment with the curving stub of the defences on the E end of the S side, is indicated as a darker line in the grass recorded from the air (CUCAP BD 7 (7a)). This line would give the interior of the camp an area of about 1.9 ha (4.6 acres) and would set the rear rampart of the camp in a position that comfortably eliminates the dead ground that would otherwise have been created by the steeper slopes, 8 m high, down to the Sills Burn.
The S rampart has been much modified, as far W as the gate, by being reused as a cultivation ridge; its outer scarp remains 0.7m high. The SW quarter of the camp, in the angle between the S and W gates, is occupied by ridge-and-furrow aligned N to S. In places this rides over the rampart, which is very low and spread, but does not seem seriously to have affected the ditch.
The camp faced W, towards Dere Street, as the arrangement of its three surviving gates demonstrates. These are defended by internal claviculae, now 0.3m high; the S one has been incorporated into the end of an arable ridge and is cut off from the rampart by a furrow. The gateway has been worn down by traffic and subsequently damaged by a drain. Outside the SE defences is a low angular earthwork, consisting of a bank no more than 0.2m high, and an outer ditch; any W side has been obliterated and any junction with the camp has been cut through. The earthwork appears to precede the ridge-and-furrow cultivation and, although it could conceivably represent a small annexe to the camp, its date and function remain unknown. Full information is included in the NMR Archive (7).
Published reference (8) and further survey (9).
The Roman temporary camp known as ‘Sills Burn North’, previously recorded on the west side of Sills Burn and to the immediate east of Dere Street, was mapped as an earthwork from aerial photography and lidar imagery as part of a PhD project at the University of York, in collaboration with the Historic England aerial investigation and mapping team. The earthworks survive, though are overlain and eroded in places by later ridge and furrow ploughing (UID 1630601), particularly at the eastern end of the camp. Alongside the main camp is a small rectangular earthwork enclosure, adjoined to the southern side.
The camp, as mapped from lidar imagery and remaining extant on the latest 2016 aerial photography, is as described by Authorities 1 to 9, with the following addenda. The denuded ditch of the eastern side of the camp is visible in one location close to the NE corner of the camp, marking the line of that edge of the camp. The probable annexe, a smaller rectilinear enclosure surrounded by an internal bank and external ditch on its east, south and west sides, measuring 53 x 35m internally, the north being delineated by the southern perimeter of the main camp. The W side and SW corner of the annexe were previously unrecorded but these are visible on lidar imagery, underlying the later ridge and furrow (UID 1630601). The ridge and furrow has also removed the evidence of how the annexe related to the main camp (10-11).
|