Roundlaw stood north of the Roman road between Ardunie and Kirkhill. Its entrance faced south, across the road towards Strathearn. The 1972 excavation found the installation slightly down the eastern slope of a small rise rather than on its highest point.
Visit Roundlaw
📍 Location: Roundlaw, Perth and Kinross. National Grid reference NN 9580 1889.
👁 What survives: A ploughed site with no standing tower; excavation revealed rock-cut foundations and ditch.
⭐ Best for: A tower cut into the rock.
🥾 Visit: The pin marks the archaeological site, not a parking place, entrance or confirmed walking route. Use existing appropriate paths, respect crops and neighbouring homes, and follow local signs and any forestry restrictions.
🏛 Explore nearby: Gask Ridge watchtower guide · Strageath Roman Fort
Google Map location · Trove site record · HES scheduled monument record · Roman Gask Project
Approximate site pin, converted from the published National Grid reference (OSGB36 / British National Grid) to WGS84. Use it to locate the site, not its scheduled boundary. The reference is shown at approximately 10 metres precision; it is not a new survey.
Roundlaw at a glance
| Feature | Evidence and interpretation |
|---|---|
| Period | Usually assigned to the late first-century, Flavian Gask system; precise site chronology remains uncertain. |
| Remains | A ploughed site with no standing tower; excavation revealed rock-cut foundations and ditch. |
| Roadside position | North of the Roman road. |
| Possible communication | Roundlaw → Raith → Strageath |
| Garrison | The unit and number of soldiers are not securely known. |
The remains and their investigation
Anne Robertson and John Mackenzie investigated the site after aerial photography had shown a ring ditch and possible internal post settings. Excavating through the dry bedrock proved difficult. The ditch sections were about 2.13 metres wide and more than 1.2 metres deep, with an almost vertical outer face and a more gently sloping inner face.
Material that had slipped into the ditch suggested a turf bank inside it, although ploughing had removed the bank itself. The post settings were also cut into rock. Robertson reconstructed a tower approximately 3.05 metres east–west by 4.27 metres north–south, positioned towards the entrance side of the enclosure. These dimensions describe an interpreted ground plan; they do not establish the building's height.
The excavation report places the site about 42–46 metres north of the road. Other comparative summaries give different offsets, so the diagram preserves the well-established side without claiming a surveyed distance. The published web transcription also ends with a finds sentence naming Parkneuk; that ambiguous wording is not treated here as secure evidence for Roundlaw's finds.
Watching the road
The nearby road linked the larger garrisons and the smaller posts. A watchtower gave soldiers an elevated position from which to observe traffic and the surrounding ground. The close spacing of these installations makes sense for surveillance as well as communication: recognising movement on a road is a different task from seeing a distant warning signal.
Modern trees, field boundaries and road surfaces are later parts of this landscape. They can hide both the earthworks and former sightlines. A modern ground-level view should therefore be compared cautiously with the possible outlook from a timber platform.
Roundlaw on the Gask Ridge
Possible communication with the forts
In Woolliscroft’s proposed network, the ridge-top towers as far east as Midgate could communicate with Raith. Raith could then relay a signal to Strageath. The diagram shows this possible two-stage connection for Roundlaw; it does not claim a demonstrated direct view to the fort.
These links depend on assumptions about tower height and visibility. Vegetation, weather and whether the installations were occupied at the same time also matter. Neither the diagram nor the surviving earthworks establishes a signalling code, a fixed watch rota or the size of a tower crew.
References and further reading
Trove: Roundlaw — NRHE 25966 — national site record, location and archaeological references.
HES scheduled monument record — SM3532. HES designation records are available through Trove.
Robertson and Mackenzie: Roundlaw, 1972 excavation, published in Robertson (1974) — report or source text hosted by the Roman Gask Project.
Woolliscroft (1993), Signalling and the design of the Gask Ridge system, PSAS 123, 291–313 — possible links and their limitations.
Woolliscroft and Hoffmann, The Roman Gask system fortlet of Glenbank, PSAS 139, 167–193, Table 2 — comparative roadside positions. Westerton follows its excavation report where the descriptions differ.
Read alongside the Gask Ridge watchtower guide and the guide to Roman forts in Scotland.
