Bearsden was a small Roman fort on the Antonine Wall in what is now the northern suburbs of Glasgow, occupied for roughly twenty years from c. AD 142 until the abandonment of the Wall around AD 158–165. It was a secondary installation rather than a primary fort, attached to the south side of the Wall, and appears to have functioned partly as an annexe; the main garrison block lay east of an internal dividing wall, while the western half contained a bathhouse and latrine complex.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As one of the most completely excavated installations on the Antonine Wall, Bearsden provides exceptionally detailed evidence for daily life, diet, and sanitation in a frontier garrison during the brief Antonine occupation of central Scotland. Its bathhouse is among the best-preserved Roman structures in Scotland and is displayed as a scheduled monument.
David Breeze's excavations between 1973 and 1982 uncovered the bathhouse, latrine, granaries, and timber buildings, along with altars and sculptural fragments. Particularly notable was the analysis of sewage from the latrine drain, which preserved waste containing wheat, barley, figs, dill, coriander, opium poppy, and abundant whipworm and roundworm eggs — evidence of a largely cereal- and plant-based diet and heavy parasite burden among the troops.
Bearsden was a small Roman fort on the Antonine Wall in what is now the northern suburbs of Glasgow, occupied for roughly twenty years from c. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a fort site from the Roman period in Britain.
Bearsden is classified as a Roman fort — a military site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Bearsden Roman bath house (0.4 km), Castlehill (1.9 km), Cleddans (3.4 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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