RAEBURNFOOT
Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire, Scotland.
Small Roman fort above the junction of
the river Esk and the Rae Burn, 23 km N of Langholm.
Recent excavation has shown that for a short time it
stood inside a large compound on the W side of a steep
scarp above the Esk, during the Antonine advance into
Scotland, about the middle of the 2d c. A.D. The fort was
defended by a turf rampart ca. 6 m wide, and by two
ditches ca. 3 m wide. There were entrances not more than
6 m wide in the N and S sides, on either side of which
the two ditches combined into looped ends. The internal
buildings were of timber and apparently consisted only
of quarters for troops. The internal area was 4 ha.
The outer compound, partly eroded, now measures internally ca. 164 m N-S and ca. 108 m E-W. The rampart,
ca. 5.4 m wide, was constructed mainly of clay dug from
the accompanying ditch of the same width. The compound, in which no buildings were found, had two entrances, N and S, exactly opposite those of the small fort. Evidently it served as an annex, corral, or wagon park
for the small fort.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Robertson, “Excavations at Raeburnfoot, 1959-60,”
Trans. Dumfriesshire and Galloway Ant.
and Nat. Hist. Soc. 39 (1961) 24-49.
A. S. ROBERTSON
