Bothwellhaugh Roman Fort - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Bothwellhaugh Roman Fort, known as Clotagenium ("Clyde-mouth") to the Romans

Roman Britain

Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...

is the remains of a Roman legionary fort in North Lanarkshire

North Lanarkshire

North Lanarkshire is one of 32 council areas in Scotland. It borders onto the northeast of the City of Glasgow and contains much of Glasgow's suburbs and commuter towns and villages. It also borders Stirling, Falkirk, East Dunbartonshire, West Lothian and South Lanarkshire...

near Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

.

It was built as part of the western side of the Antonine Wall

Antonine Wall

The Antonine Wall is a stone and turf fortification built by the Romans across what is now the Central Belt of Scotland, between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. Representing the northernmost frontier barrier of the Roman Empire, it spanned approximately 39 miles and was about ten feet ...

built around 142 CE. A comparible eastern site would be Inveresk Roman Fort

Inveresk Roman Fort

Inveresk Roman Fort is an archaeological site within the grounds of St Michael's Church, Inveresk, a village in East Lothian, Scotland. Several seasons of excavation since 1946, both major and minor, have established the outline of the fort and recovered some of the interior detail.The fort covered...

. The forts defenses consisted of a turf and clay rampart 23½ feet (7.16m) thick, supported on thick sandstone foundation slabs, part of which was preserved to a height of around 5 ft (1.5m). A 33 ft (10m) wide berm separated the fort wall and the first of two ditches, each measuring about 15 ft (4.6m) wide and 4 ft (1.2m) deep, and spaced 7 ft (2.1m) apart. It was built in a rhomboid

Rhomboid

Traditionally, in two-dimensional geometry, a rhomboid is a parallelogram in which adjacent sides are of unequal lengths and angles are oblique.A parallelogram with sides of equal length is a rhombus but not a rhomboid....

pattern and was large enough to house both troops and cavalry. A number of artifacts were taken from the excavations on the site, such as a carved drain cover, to the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University and are now on show there.

Near the fort are the well preserved remains of a Roman Bath house

Thermae

In ancient Rome, thermae and balnea were facilities for bathing...

and a medieval copy of an original Roman Bridge over the South Calder Water

South Calder Water

The South Calder Water is a river in Scotland. It runs west from the high plateau between Shotts and Fauldhouse, which also produces the River Almond, which flows east into the River Forth.The river is known locally as "The Cawder".-Route:...

. The distance from the thermae (baths) to the fort suggests there are other, as yet undiscovered structures.

See also