Birdhope is a group of three overlapping Roman temporary marching camps situated immediately south of the fort at High Rochester (Bremenium) on Dere Street, in the Rede valley of Northumberland. They likely date to the campaigning phases of the late 1st to 2nd century AD, when Dere Street served as the main invasion route into Scotland, and probably represent successive overnight stops by army units of differing sizes moving north or south past Bremenium.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The camps illustrate the repeated military use of the Dere Street corridor through Redesdale, complementing the permanent garrison at High Rochester and providing direct evidence for the scale and frequency of troop movements between Hadrian's Wall and Scotland. As a cluster of three, they are particularly valuable for studying variation in temporary camp planning at a single staging point.
The camps are known principally from aerial photography and earthwork survey, which have identified differing sizes and partial perimeters with traces of gates and tituli; no significant excavation has been published, and dating rests on morphology and the parallel evidence of the adjacent fort rather than stratified finds.
Birdhope is a group of three overlapping Roman temporary marching camps situated immediately south of the fort at High Rochester (Bremenium) on Dere Street, in the Rede valley of Northumberland. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a military camp site from the Roman period in Britain.
Birdhope Camps is classified as a Roman military camp — 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 Bremenium (0.6 km), Roman Camp, 750m SSW of Sills Farm (0.9 km), Romano-British enclosed settlement 400m south east of Woolaw (0.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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