It may not be out of place to give here some account of the wall of
Antonine. The wall or rampart extended from Carriden on the Forth,
two miles west from Blackness, and about the same distance east from
Bo’ness, to West Kilpatrick on the Clyde. The date, which may be
depended on, assigned to the building of the wall is between 138 and
140 A.D. Taking the length of this wall from Kilpatrick on the Clyde
to Caeridden or Carriden on the Forth, its extent would be 39,726
Roman paces, which exactly agrees with the modern measurement of
36 English miles and 620 yards. This rampart, which was of earth,
and rested on a stone foundation, was upwards of twenty feet high
and four and twenty feet thick. Along the whole extent of the wall
there was a vast ditch or _prætentura_ on the outward or north
side, which was generally twenty feet deep and forty feet wide, and
which, there is reason to believe, might be filled with water when
occasion required.[15] This ditch and rampart were strengthened at
both ends, and throughout its whole extent, by about twenty forts,
three being at each extremity, and the remainder placed between at
the distance of about two English miles from one another; and it is
highly probable that these stations were designedly placed on the
previous fortifications of Agricola. The following, going from east
to west, are the names and sites of some of the stations which have
been identified:--Rough Castle, Castlecary, Westerwood, Bunhill,
Auchindinny, Kirkintilloch, Bemulie, East Kilpatrick, Castlehill,
Duntocher, West Kilpatrick. It will be seen that to a certain extent
they are on the line of the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway, and
throughout nearly its whole length that of the Forth and Clyde canal.
Its necessary appendage, a military road, ran behind the rampart from
end to end, for the use of the troops and for keeping up the usual
communication between the stations or forts. From inscriptions on
some of the foundation stones, which have been dug up, it appears
that the Second legion, with detachments from the sixth and twentieth
legions and some auxiliaries, executed these vast military works,
equally creditable to their skill and perseverance. Dunglas near the
western extremity, and Blackness near the eastern extremity of the
rampart, afforded the Romans commodious harbours for their shipping,
as also did Cramond, about five miles west from Edinburgh. This wall
is called in the popular language of the country Grime’s or Graham’s
Dyke.[16] In 1868 a large oblong slab, in first-rate preservation,
was dug up at Bo’ness, in the parish of Kinneil (Bede’s _Peanfahel_,
“the head of the wall”), containing an inscription as distinct as it
was on the day when it came from a Roman chisel. We give here a cut
of this remarkable stone, which is now in the Scottish Antiquarian
Museum.
[Illustration: Stone from Antonine’s Wall. (Copied and engraved
specially for the present work.)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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