Broadbury Castle is a Roman temporary marching camp situated on the high ground of Broadbury ridge in west Devon, between Okehampton and Holsworthy. It lies in an area where a network of similar camps has been identified — likely associated with the Roman military advance into the South West during the mid-1st century AD, broadly contemporary with the campaigns of the Second Augustan Legion under Vespasian (c. AD 50s–70s).
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The camp forms part of a chain of marching and campaign camps across Devon and Cornwall that mark the western progression of Roman military activity beyond the legionary fortress at Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum). Its upland position on Broadbury commands long views and would have served as an overnight or short-term staging post for troops moving through Dumnonian territory.
The site is known primarily from aerial photography and earthwork survey, which identified the characteristic playing-card outline typical of Roman temporary camps; little or no excavation has been published, and no significant artefactual assemblage is recorded from the site itself. As with most of Devon's recently recognised marching camps (many identified only in the past few decades through aerial reconnaissance and lidar), dating relies on morphological comparison rather than stratified finds.
Broadbury Castle is a Roman temporary marching camp situated on the high ground of Broadbury ridge in west Devon, between Okehampton and Holsworthy. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a military camp site from the Roman period in Britain.
Broadbury Castle Roman camp 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 Okehampton Roman fort, fortlet and associated enclosures (11.2 km), ‘Nemetotacio’ (18.2 km), Roman forts, marching camps and associated monuments (18.3 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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