The Antonine Wall required accommodation for the soldiers who built it as well as the garrisons who later occupied its forts. Temporary camps beside the frontier provide evidence for that working landscape. They are less conspicuous than the finished Wall, but help explain how such a large building programme was organised.
Calling an enclosure a construction camp is an interpretation of its use. The strongest arguments draw together its position, dimensions and relationship to other features. A small camp near a fort is not automatically a builders’ camp.
A recognisable group, with variation
Rebecca Jones identifies the small camps along the Antonine Wall as Scotland’s clearest construction-camp group. Her general discussion highlights a concentration around 2–2.5 hectares. The individual gazetteer entries show a wider range, however, and should take precedence over any simplified rule.
| Camp | Area recorded by Jones | Useful evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Easter Cadder | About 1.5 hectares | Almost square; beside the Wall, with recorded entrance gaps and tituli. |
| Summerston | About 2.3 hectares | Partly reconstructed perimeter; excavation indicates a single construction phase preceding the adjacent fortlet. |
| Tamfourhill | About 2.7 hectares | Rectangular enclosure south of the Wall; gateway positions suggest a north-north-east orientation. |
The figures above follow Jones’s measurements, not a new survey. In particular, the full width at Summerston is uncertain. Rounded areas should not be used to calculate exact numbers of workmen.
Summerston: the value of a building sequence
At Summerston, the relationship between camp and fortlet provides more than proximity on a map. Jones records that the adjacent fortlet’s ditch was laid out to avoid the camp, and that excavation indicated the camp slightly preceded it. This supports an interpretation within the Antonine building programme.
The entrances are less securely known. Breaks in an incomplete cropmark may reflect visibility rather than gateways. It would therefore be misleading to draw a confidently complete plan with a fixed number of entrances from those observations alone.
Easter Cadder and Tamfourhill
Easter Cadder is almost square, measuring approximately 125 by 120 metres in Jones’s account. Tamfourhill is more rectangular, approximately 190 by 140 metres. Both belong in the discussion of Wall construction camps, despite their different outlines and areas.
At Tamfourhill, the position of the recorded gates suggests that the camp faced broadly towards the frontier works near Watling Lodge. This is a useful relationship between layout and setting, but it does not identify the unit housed there or prove the direction in which its building gang worked.
Camps, forts and working parties
The temporary camps and the permanent Antonine Wall forts answered different needs. A camp offered defended accommodation during an operation. A fort provided the more substantial buildings associated with an established garrison. The local sequence could be complicated, with different enclosures preceding or accompanying parts of the frontier.
The camps should not be treated as identical modules, each containing the same number of soldiers working on an equally long stretch of Wall. Changes in terrain, the task and the available ground could affect the arrangements. A named legion on a distance slab is also not direct proof that its men occupied a particular nearby camp.
Beyond the Antonine Wall
Temporary camps associated with construction have also been proposed around Inchtuthil. Those interpretations need their own assessment. The comparatively strong Wall-side pattern does not turn every camp next to a permanent base into a construction camp.
These enclosures show why ‘marching camp’ is sometimes too restrictive. Soldiers needed defended accommodation while working as well as while advancing, and the landscape around a frontier can preserve traces of both activities.
Lime burning near Inchtuthil
At Steeds Stalls, Gourdie, close to Inchtuthil, distinctive earthworks and cropmarks have been interpreted as large lime kilns. Lime would have supplied mortar for the fortress building programme. This makes the site relevant to the wider construction landscape, while leaving the function and sequence of individual enclosures open to investigation. See Rebecca Jones, Roman Camps in Scotland, Callander’s Landscape (2:36 onwards) and the Scottish Archaeological Research Framework discussion of building materials.
In the same lecture Jones considers four larger Wall-side camps as possible accommodation during the earliest work on setting out the frontier. That is a proposed phase within the building programme, rather than evidence that all construction camps followed one standard plan. See Rebecca Jones, Roman Camps in Scotland, Callander’s Landscape (4:05 onwards).
Sources
Jones, R. H. (2011; open-access edition 2026), Roman Camps in Scotland. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, p. 10, p. 54, pp. 195–196 and pp. 307–308. Page numbers refer to the printed pagination.
For the wider setting, read The Antonine Wall. For camp interiors, see Inside a Roman marching camp.
Return to Roman Camps in Scotland.
