Croy Hill was a Roman fort on the Antonine Wall in central Scotland, occupying a prominent basalt ridge between the forts of Bar Hill and Westerwood. Built in the early 140s AD under Antoninus Pius and held until the abandonment of the Wall in the early 160s, it was a relatively small fort (roughly 1.5 acres) attached to the rear of the Wall, with an associated fortlet a short distance to the west and an annexe to the east. The Wall ditch here was famously left uncut through the hardest section of dolerite bedrock, a remarkable visible testament to the limits of Roman engineering.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As one of the chain of garrison posts along the Antonine frontier, Croy Hill helped control movement across the central isthmus of Scotland, with its elevated position offering commanding views over the Kelvin valley. A tombstone and altars from the site attest to the presence of detachments of the Sixth Legion and possibly auxiliary troops, and the well-known relief of three Roman soldiers from the hill is among the more evocative sculptural finds from the Wall.
Excavations by Macdonald in the 1920s–30s and later work by Hanson identified the fort's defences, internal timber buildings, the adjacent fortlet, expansions (small turf platforms north of the Wall), and two rock-cut wells in the annexe, one of which contained altars apparently deposited at the site's abandonment
Croy Hill was a Roman fort on the Antonine Wall in central Scotland, occupying a prominent basalt ridge between the forts of Bar Hill and Westerwood. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a fort site from the Roman period in Britain.
Croy Hill 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 Westerwood (2.6 km), Bar Hill Roman Fort (2.6 km), Bar Hill Fort Bathhouse (2.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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