Moss Side Tower

Report of excavations in 1900

The full text can be found in D.J.Christison “The Roman Road and Adjoining works from Ardoch to the Earn”, PSAS, 35, 1901.

No. 6 [Moss Side] is 2/3 of a mile east of No. 5, and 70 yards north of the road. The plough had recently come close up to this work and destroyed the ditch with its outer [upcast] mound, but the inner area, with an unequivocal rampart (here alone met with in the six works otherwise so much alike), survived in good condition. It was about 14′ wide and 3′ high, and was composed of about ten alternate layers of black mould, and yellow or red clay. The level interior was about 22′ in diameter. In it, but not in the centre, were four ‘post-holes’ in a square formation, with a base of 11′ measuring from the centres of the holes, but, unlike the other works in which ‘post-holes’ were found, three of these holes were connected by flat cuts, probably to hold beams. The ‘post-holes’ were larger than in the other instances, being fully 3′ deep, and from 2′ to 2′ 6″ in diameter (fig). One of the holes, F, seemed to have been filled in at the bottom to allow beams in L F and I F to meet.

A long term research project to study the Romans north of the Antonine Wall