The Bearsden bath house served the small Antonine Wall fort at Bearsden (ancient name uncertain, possibly part of the Cadder–Balmuildy sector), occupied c. AD 142–c. 165. Built of stone with a timber-framed changing room (apodyterium), it followed the standard sequence of cold, warm and hot rooms (frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium) plus a hot dry room (laconicum), and despite the "civilian" tag in modern records, it was a military bath house attached to the fort's annexe, serving the garrison.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
It is one of the best-preserved Roman buildings in Scotland and the most complete bath house on the Antonine Wall, offering an unusually clear ground plan of a frontier military bath suite. Its short occupation makes it a tightly dated snapshot of mid-2nd-century Roman bathing practice on Rome's northernmost frontier.
Excavated principally by David Breeze in the 1970s, the site revealed well-preserved hypocaust pilae, flue arches, stone benches, and the adjacent latrine, whose sewer famously yielded waterlogged human cess deposits — analysis of which (by Andrew Dickson and others) revealed a diet including wheat, barley, figs, dill, coriander and opium poppy, alongside whipworm and roundworm parasites. The remains are consolidated and on public display under Historic Environment Sc
The Bearsden bath house served the small Antonine Wall fort at Bearsden (ancient name uncertain, possibly part of the Cadder–Balmuildy sector), occupied c. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a bath house site from the Roman period in Britain.
Bearsden Roman bath house is classified as a Roman bath house — a civilian 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 (0.4 km), Castlehill (2.3 km), Balmuildy Roman Fort (3.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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