The Antonine Wall ( Latin : Vallum Antonini ) was a turf fortification on stone foundations, built by the Romans across what is now the Central Belt of Scotland , between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth . Built some twenty years after Hadrian's Wall to the south, and intended to supersede it, while it was garrisoned it was the northernmost frontier barrier of the Roman Empire . It spanned approximately 63 kilometres (39 miles) and was about 3 metres (10 feet) high and 5 metres (16 feet) wide. Lidar scans have been carried out to establish the length of the wall and the Roman distance units used. Security was bolstered by a deep ditch on the northern side. It is thought that there was a wooden palisade on top of the turf. The barrier was the second of two "great walls" created by the Romans in Great Britain in the second century AD. Its ruins are less evident than those of the better-known and longer Hadrian's Wall to the south, primarily because the turf and wood wall has largely weathered away, unlike its stone-built southern predecessor.
50-672: The Maeatae were a confederation of tribes that probably lived beyond the Antonine Wall in Roman Britain . The historical sources are vague as to the exact region they inhabited, but an association is thought to be indicated in the names of two hills with fortifications. Near the summit of Dumyat hill in the Ochils , overlooking Stirling , there are remains of a fort and the name of the hill (in Gaelic Dùn Mhèad )
100-684: A name still found in Bo'ness at the wall's eastern end – and then linked with Clan Graham . Of note is that Graeme in some parts of Scotland is a nickname for the devil, and Gryme's Dyke would thus be the Devil's Dyke, mirroring the name of the Roman limes in Southern Germany often called 'Teufelsmauer'. Grímr and Grim are bynames for Odin or Wodan , who might be credited with the wish to build earthworks in unreasonably short periods of time. This name
150-709: A remnant of the previous medieval church, a font is currently on display in the local museum. Unusually in this part of Clydeside two examples of the Govan School of sculpture, dated to the Viking period, have been found. The Old Kilpatrick Cross (in fact the shaft of a cross) discovered in 1886 when the Auchentorlie tomb was opened for the burial of Andrew Buchanan. That cross is now in storage in Glasgow Museums Another stone, locally known as
200-673: A serious revolt against the Roman Empire, which was reportedly a very bloody affair on both sides. Another revolt took place the following year. In 213 AD, Joseph Ritson records them receiving money from the Romans to keep the peace. The Miathi, mentioned in Adomnán 's Life of Columba , probably to be identified with the Southern Picts , have been posited as the same group, their identity seemingly surviving in some form as late as
250-417: A strong stone wall from sea to sea, in a straight line between the towns that had been there built for fear of the enemy, where Severus also had formerly built a rampart. Bede obviously identified Gildas's stone wall as Hadrian's Wall, but he sets its construction in the 5th century rather than the 120s, and does not mention Hadrian. And he would appear to have believed that the ditch-and-mound barrier known as
300-453: A total of nineteen forts along the wall. The best preserved but also one of the smallest forts is Rough Castle Fort . In addition to the forts, there are at least nine smaller fortlets, very likely on Roman mile spacings, which formed part of the original scheme, some of which were later replaced by forts. The most visible fortlet is Kinneil, at the eastern end of the Wall, near Bo'ness. There
350-482: A wide ditch on the north side, and a military way on the south. The stone foundations and wing walls of the original forts on the Antonine Wall demonstrate that the original plan was to build a stone wall similar to Hadrian's Wall, but this was quickly amended. The Romans initially planned to build forts every 10 kilometres (6 miles), but this was soon revised to every 3.3 kilometres (2 miles), resulting in
400-479: A work, but of sods, which made it of no use. Nevertheless, they carried it for many miles between the two bays or inlets of the sea of which we have spoken; to the end that where the protection of the water was wanting, they might use the rampart to defend their borders from the irruptions of the enemies. Of the work there erected, that is, of a rampart of great breadth and height, there are evident remains to be seen at this day. It begins at about two miles' distance from
450-537: Is St Patrick's RC Church; the current parish priest is Rev William McGinley. A fire in August 2015 saw the RC congregation temporarily without a place to worship, taking up the kind offer of the nearby Church of Scotland congregation to use their building, a friendly act of ecumenism in part of Scotland traditionally torn by bigotry. There are plans to develop a marine technology hub at the former Royal Navy oil refinery and
500-588: Is believed to derive from name meaning the hill of the Maeatae. The prominent hill fort may have marked their northern boundary, but Myot Hill , near Fankerton , plausibly marks their southern limits. A discussion of two views of the importance of Dumyat and Myot Hill is given in Wainwright. Cassius Dio describes them in detail in his Roman History (Book LXXVII), and is later quoted by Joseph Ritson and others. John Rhys seems convinced that they occupied
550-635: Is now at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow and residual paint traces probably remaining from its later reuse have been analysed. The UK government's nomination of the Antonine Wall for World Heritage status to the international conservation body UNESCO was first officially announced in 2003. It has been backed by the Scottish Government since 2005 and by Scotland's then Culture Minister Patricia Ferguson since 2006. It became
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#1732765152644600-665: Is the same one found as Grim's Ditch several times in England in connection with early ramparts: for example, near Wallingford , Oxfordshire or between Berkhamsted (Herts) and Bradenham (Bucks). Other names used by antiquarians include the Wall of Pius and the Antonine Vallum, after Antoninus Pius. Edmund Spenser in Book II of The Faerie Queene (1590) alludes to the Wall, misattributing it to Constantine II. Hector Boece in his 1527 History of Scotland called it
650-524: Is visible of the remains today; the remains lie beneath the houses of Gavinburn Gardens to the east, a large commercial building to the west and the A814 road to the north. Finds from Old Kilpatrick include several distance slabs. One distance slab by the Twentieth Legion is known to have been completed before 1684. It depicts Victory with a palm-branch in one hand and a garland in the other. It
700-610: The Antonine Wall is at Old Kilpatrick; the eastern end, 59 km distant, is at Bridgeness , to the east in Bo'ness on the Firth of Forth . The route was surveyed during the 18th century, and traced to the Chapel Hill, where various Roman artefacts were found. Lottery funding has been assigned to producing replica distance markers; the West Dunbartonshire marker is to be placed at Old Kilpatrick. In 1790, when
750-524: The Forth and Clyde Canal was being constructed, the remains of a bathhouse were discovered. In 1913, the foundations of the fort, which had been conjectured as being in the vicinity, were confirmed. In 1923, during redevelopment of the area, significant archaeology was undertaken which established the size and nature of the Roman Fort . The fort, built around 81 AD, occupied an area of about four acres and
800-592: The Roman legions withdrew to Hadrian's Wall in 162, and over time may have reached an accommodation with the Brythonic tribes of the area, whom they may have fostered as possible buffer states which would later become "The Old North" . After a series of attacks in 197, the emperor Septimius Severus arrived in Scotland in 208, and campaigned against the Maeatae (based in the central Midland Valley on either side of
850-490: The Vallum (just to the south of, and contemporary with, Hadrian's Wall) was the rampart constructed by Severus. Many centuries would pass before just who built what became apparent. In medieval histories, such as the chronicles of John of Fordun , the wall is called Gryme's dyke . Fordun says that the name came from the grandfather of the imaginary king Eugenius son of Farquahar. This evolved over time into Graham's dyke –
900-457: The "wall of Abercorn ", repeating the story that it had been destroyed by Graham. Renaissance patrons in the 16th century, including George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal , who were exposed to the world of international scholarship through diplomacy, began to collect antiquities. The Earl Marischal set a stone from the Antonine Wall in the walls of Dunnotar Castle and had it painted and gilded, probably by Andrew Melville of Stonehaven . The stone
950-548: The 6th or 7th centuries AD. Antonine Wall Construction began in AD ;142 at the order of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius . Estimates of how long it took to complete vary widely, with six and twelve years most commonly proposed. Antoninus Pius never visited Britain, unlike his predecessor Hadrian . Pressure from the Caledonians probably led Antoninus to send the empire's troops further north. The Antonine Wall
1000-456: The Abercorn family. His son James Hamilton was created Lord Abercorn on 5 April 1603, then on 10 July 1606 he was made Earl of Abercorn and Lord of Paisley, Hamilton, Mountcastell and Kilpatrick . Kilpatrick was split into two parishes – Old (Wester or West) and New Kilpatrick (also known as Easter or East) by an Act of Parliament on 16 February 1649. This division is unusual because this
1050-620: The Firth of Clyde – Firth of Forth line) and the Caledonians to their north. While he carried out substantial work on Hadrian's Wall at the time, there is no evidence of any attention being paid to the remains of the Antonine Wall during the campaigns of 208–210. References in Late Roman sources to Severus' wall-building activities led to later scholars like Bede mistaking references to the Antonine Wall for ones to Hadrian's Wall . In
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#17327651526441100-643: The Glen Lusset. The Twisted Thistle was previously known as the Telstar. After the closure of The Telstar, the building was renovated and reopened in 2014 as The Twisted Thistle. There are two annual fêtes which are well attended. Also at the north end of Old Kilpatrick is the local school. Gavinburn Primary School (which was bombed in WW2) where they also have many fêtes annually. The minerals edingtonite and thomsonite were first found at Old Kilpatrick. In
1150-437: The Romans did establish forts and temporary camps further north of the Antonine Wall in order to protect their routes to northern Britain, they did not conquer the Caledonians , and the Antonine Wall suffered many attacks. The Romans called the land north of the wall Caledonia , though in some contexts the term may refer to the whole area north of Hadrian's Wall. The land north of the Antonine Wall became known as Albany after
1200-556: The Sandyford Cross, almost 3 metres in height was believed to be the execution place of a woman tried for witchcraft in the late 17th century. It was used as a bridge across the Dalnottar burn before being taken into the home of Robert Donald at Mountblow. From there it transferred to Glasgow Corporation in the 19th century and from there to the collection at Kelvingrove where it remains in storage The parish system
1250-580: The UK's official nomination in late January 2007, and MSPs were called to support the bid anew in May 2007. The Antonine Wall was listed as an extension to the World Heritage Site "Frontiers of the Roman Empire" on 7 July 2008. Though the Antonine Wall is mentioned in the text, it does not appear on UNESCO's map of world heritage properties. Several individual sites along the line of the wall are in
1300-556: The Wall itself there are a number of coastal forts both in the East (e.g. Inveresk ) and West (Outerwards and Lurg Moor), which should be considered as outposts and/or supply bases to the Wall itself. In addition a number of forts farther north were brought back into service in the Gask Ridge area, including Ardoch , Strageath , Bertha (Perth) and probably Dalginross and Cargill. Recent research by Glasgow University has shown that
1350-515: The basis for a large-scale (25-inch) folio produced by the Ordnance Survey in 1931. The Ordnance Survey produced a revised folio in 1954–1957, and then carried out a complete re-survey in 1979–80. They also published a smaller scale map of the Wall, at 1:25,000 in 1969. Further mapping activity was carried out to support the nomination of the Wall as a World Heritage Site Modern computer techniques like using GIS and LIDAR can now map
1400-481: The care of Historic Environment Scotland . These are at: All sites are unmanned and open at all reasonable times. The first capable effort to systematically map the Antonine Wall was undertaken in 1764 by William Roy , the forerunner of the Ordnance Survey . He provided accurate and detailed drawings of its remains, and where the wall has been destroyed by later development, his maps and drawings are now
1450-602: The centuries that the Antonine Wall has lain abandoned, it has influenced culture between the Forth and the Clyde. Writing in 730, Bede , following Gildas in his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae , mistakenly ascribes the construction of the Antonine Wall to the Britons in his Historia Ecclesiastica 1.12 : The islanders built the wall which they had been told to raise, not of stone, since they had no workmen capable of such
1500-514: The distance slabs have been scanned and 3-D videos produced. There are plans to reproduce the slabs, both digitally and in real physical copies, with their authentic colours. A copy of the Bridgeness Slab has already been made and can be found in Bo'ness . It is also expected that lottery funding will allow replicas of distance markers to be placed along the length of the wall. The wall was abandoned within two decades of completion when
1550-553: The distance stones, stone sculptures unique to the Antonine Wall which were embedded in the wall to mark the lengths built by each legion, were brightly painted unlike their present bare appearance. These stones are preserved in the university's museum and are said to be the best-preserved examples of statuary from any Roman frontier. Several of the slabs have been analysed by various techniques including portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF). Tiny remnants of paint have been detected by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Several of
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1600-452: The early 1990s a large housing estate was constructed at the edge of Old Kilpatrick, the one estate was said to double the size of Old Kilpatrick. The ancient graveyard surrounding the old parish church still has surviving gravestones from the 17th century. The current building dates from 1812 and is still in use as the local Church of Scotland parish church, now linked with neighbouring Bowling Parish Church. The local Roman Catholic church
1650-474: The effort, which may have taken as long as twelve years. The wall stretches 63 kilometres (39 miles) from Old Kilpatrick in West Dunbartonshire on the Firth of Clyde to Carriden near Bo'ness on the Firth of Forth . The wall was intended to extend Roman territory and dominance by replacing Hadrian's Wall 160 kilometres (100 miles) to the south, as the frontier of Britannia . But while
1700-484: The identity of the Maeatae but he mentions that some authorities think they may have had a Norse origin. They appear to have come together as a result of treaties struck between the Roman Empire and the various frontier tribes in the 180s AD under the governorship of Ulpius Marcellus . Virius Lupus is recorded as being obliged to buy peace from the Maeatae at the end of the second century. In 210 AD, they began
1750-467: The land between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay or parts of what is now Clackmannanshire , Fife and Stirlingshire . He also suggests that the Isle of May might derive its name from the tribe. Dio mentions the Maeatae were between the wall and the Caledonians but there is some dispute over whether he is referring to Antonine's Wall or Hadrian's Wall . Alexander del Mar says no-one really knows
1800-573: The monastery of Aebbercurnig [Abercorn], west of it, at a place called in the Pictish language Peanfahel, but in the English tongue, Penneltun [Kinneil], and running westward, ends near the city of Aicluith [Dumbarton]. Bede associated Gildas's turf wall with the Antonine Wall. As for Hadrian's Wall, Bede again follows Gildas: [the departing Romans] thinking that it might be some help to the allies [Britons], whom they were forced to abandon, constructed
1850-420: The only reliable record of it. In the 19th century, the Ordnance Survey showed the visible traces of the wall in some detail on its first and second edition maps at 25-inch and 6-inch scales, but no attempt was made at that date to undertake archaeological work. Sir George Macdonald carried out systematic work on the wall that was published in 1911 and in an expanded second edition in 1934. His work provided
1900-482: The parish of Old Kilpatrick which itself was only a few thousand people strong. The Forth and Clyde Canal separates Old Kilpatrick from the north bank of the River Clyde which is just a few metres beyond it to the south. The village is about three miles (five kilometres) west of Clydebank , on the road west to Dumbarton where some say the river becomes the Firth of Clyde . The Great Western Road runs through
1950-711: The population was 5,800. From 1906 to 1931, Old Kilpatrick was the site of the Napier and Miller shipyard. Today, the north end of the Erskine Bridge , which replaced the Erskine Ferry , lands just above the village, and the village is served by Kilpatrick railway station on the North Clyde Line . There are three public houses within Old Kilpatrick; The Twisted Thistle, The Ettrick and
2000-509: The settlement of the Gaels in the 6th century. The Antonine Wall was shorter than Hadrian's Wall and built of turf on a stone foundation, but it was still an impressive achievement. It was also a simpler fortification than Hadrian's Wall insofar as it did not have a subsidiary ditch system ( Vallum ) behind it to the south. As built, the wall was typically a bank, about three metres (10 feet) high, made of layered turves and occasionally earth with
2050-474: The village whose immediate western neighbour, on the road and the canal, is Bowling , where the Forth and Clyde Canal meets the river. The modern A82 road runs to the north, between the village and the foot of the Kilpatrick Hills . In the 19th century it was described as being essentially a single street. It's possible the birthplace of Saint Patrick was near Old Kilpatrick. The western end of
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2100-496: The wall and its associated fortifications have been destroyed over time, but some remains are visible. Many of these have come under the care of Historic Environment Scotland and the UNESCO World Heritage Committee . The Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius ordered the construction of the Antonine Wall around 142. Quintus Lollius Urbicus , governor of Roman Britain at the time, initially supervised
2150-501: The wall in 3-dimensions which makes it much easier to study for example how visible forts and fortlets were to their fellow soldiers along the wall. Old Kilpatrick Old Kilpatrick ( Scots : Auld Kilpaitrick , Scottish Gaelic : Cille Phàdraig meaning "Patrick's church"), is a village in West Dunbartonshire , Scotland . The name Old Kilpatrick is said to be derived from St. Patrick ostensibly being born here. It has an estimated population of 4,820. It belonged to
2200-432: Was a split of both the ecclesiastical and civil parishes and the wealth and stipend of the original parish was shared between the two new parishes. It was more common for new parishes to have "daughter" status, with wealth retained by the central, or cathedral church. Old Kilpatrick was created a Burgh of barony in 1697. Its population tripled between 1755 and 1821 as the spinning and weaving industries developed. By 1831
2250-420: Was enclosed by an outer defensive wall. If the date is correct, it shows that the fort preceded the Antonine Wall by some sixty years. Internally, buildings discovered included a praetorium (headquarters), barracks and a granary. A video reconstruction of the site has been produced. Sir George Macdonald also wrote about the excavations. Major development precluded further significant excavation, and nothing
2300-469: Was found at Ferrydyke on the Clyde's northern bank and records the completion of 4411 feet; the last 3 Roman numerals are the same as the remaining ones on the other damaged distance slab (RIB 2206). The slabs along with many other finds from Old Kilpatrick are now kept at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow . For example, 19 coins have been found as well as a beaker. On 3 December 1969 a Roman votive altar
2350-468: Was found at Old Kilpatrick. It has been scanned and a video produced. The inscription mentions the First Cohort of Baetasians, previously known to have been at Bar Hill, and also a centurion from The First Legion (Italica) . Old Kilpatrick was one of the original parishes in medieval Scotland. The current (1812) church is built on the site of the 12th century church. One known artefact,
2400-641: Was introduced to Scotland in the 13th century. In about 1227, the church and lands of Kilpatrick were given to Paisley Abbey by Maldowen , Earl of Lennox . The parish remained under the supervision of the Abbey until the Reformation in 1560. At the Dissolution , the Church property fell into the possession of Lord Sempill. Eventually the lands were conferred on Claude Hamilton (a boy of ten), founder of
2450-399: Was once a remarkable Roman structure within sight of the Antonine Wall at Stenhousemuir , which took its name from the Roman "stone house". This was Arthur's O'on , a circular stone domed monument or rotunda , which might have been a temple, or a tropaeum , a victory monument. It was demolished for its stone in 1743, though a replica exists at Penicuik House . In addition to the line of
2500-484: Was protected by 16 forts with small fortlets between them; troop movement was facilitated by a road linking all the sites known as the Military Way . The soldiers who built the wall commemorated the construction and their struggles with the Caledonians with decorative slabs, twenty of which survive. The wall was abandoned only eight years after completion, and the garrisons relocated rearward to Hadrian's Wall. Most of
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