Bar Hill Fort

On Bar Hill’s south-facing slope, the footprint of a Roman headquarters and bathhouse still anchors a fort built into the Antonine Wall line. A 43-foot well produced an especially human collection of discarded objects when the site was excavated.

The finds include footwear for men, women and children, religious material and the equipment of water supply. Together they make Bar Hill more than a defensive point: it was a place where military routines and a wider community overlapped.

Bar Hill Fort was built around AD 142, one of more than a dozen forts raised along the Antonine Wall from about 140. Those forts follow a short route across Scotland’s central belt, a line largely followed again in the eighteenth century when the Forth and Clyde Canal was cut. Older maps and documents sometimes spell the name Barr Hill.

The shoes from the well are why the size and shape of the garrison matter here. Five hundred or so was the usual strength on this line, and a nominal thousand was reserved for a few of the largest posts. Serving soldiers could not legally marry; the footwear indicates who was living at Bar Hill regardless, and settlements of civilians are likely to have gathered outside the bigger forts.

An altar to Silvanus was found on the hill in 1895, thought to have come from a small shrine outside the fort. It is now in the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, along with others including one from Castlecary. Many further artefacts have been found at Shirva, about a mile away on the other side of Twechar.

A well 43 feet deep was discovered on the site, and several items were recovered from it — possibly dumped there when the fort was abandoned. Shoes belonging to men, women and children were among them, which has been taken to indicate family life. Other finds from the well include an altar, bones, shells and coins, along with structural material such as building columns and wooden beams and part of the well’s own pulley. Videos of reconstructed objects have since been produced, among them a barrel, a window, various columns and a bust of Silenus.

On the south-facing slope of the hill stands the headquarters building, the largest structure visible on the site, and the remains of a Roman bathhouse can also be seen. Sir George Macdonald wrote up the excavation. A computer-generated fly-around has been produced, and lidar scans have been made along the length of the wall, this site included.