Glasgow Bridge, Kirkintilloch

Just east of Glasgow Bridge, aerial photographs occasionally reveal the faint square trace of a Roman fortlet beside the Forth and Clyde Canal. Nothing identifiably Roman remains at ground level, making the view from above essential to understanding this stretch of frontier.

The modern swing bridge and A803 crossing have given the location a new transport role, but the Roman trace sits halfway between the forts at Kirkintilloch and Cadder. It is a small, carefully qualified reminder that the Wall’s line is often hidden rather than lost.

The fortlet stood on the Antonine Wall halfway between the Roman forts at Kirkintilloch and Cadder, just east of the bridge that carries the A803 over the Forth and Clyde Canal. Kirkintilloch lies east of the site and Low Moss to the south, and if one walks west the line of the Wall changes course beyond this point.

Nothing identifiably Roman can be seen on the ground any longer, and there have been no excavations to date. The fortlet can sometimes be made out in aerial photographs taken at various times since 1955, which have shown an area of about twenty metres square that could have been secured by a turf rampart with its ditch. It has been suggested that a bridge across the ditch gave admission to the frontier. There is a temporary Roman camp at Easter Cadder about a kilometre away, on raised ground roughly midway between this fortlet and the main fort at Kirkintilloch.

The road bridge that shares the name was built as a swing bridge and now carries the A803 across the canal, linking Cadder and Kirkintilloch. It has been repaired over the years; when the canal was closed the water at the bridge was run through a culvert, and the bridge was reinstated in the 1990s for the canal’s reopening. Just west of it a basin allows boats to launch from a slip. The bridge stands halfway between Glasgow and Kilsyth and is marked on the first six-inch Ordnance Survey map.

Horses were often used on the canal towpath, and the Stables bar and restaurant was developed from the buildings that housed the animals working the canal. Their labour is commemorated at the canal’s eastern extension at The Helix by the two equine sculptures known as The Kelpies.