Redshaw Burn is a small Roman fortlet in the Southern Uplands of Scotland, located beside the Roman road running north from Crawford towards Castledykes, near the watershed between Annandale and Clydesdale. Despite the prompt's classification, it lies well south of the Antonine Wall and is best understood as a road-post controlling movement along this important cross-country route, most likely occupied during the Antonine period (mid-2nd century AD), possibly with earlier Flavian or later use.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The fortlet formed part of a chain of small posts (alongside sites such as Durisdeer and Milton) that policed the highland road network linking the Solway frontier zone with the central Scottish lowlands, providing security, signalling, and likely a stopping point for official traffic and patrols rather than serving any garrison combat role.
The site is known principally from aerial photography and earthwork survey, showing a small rectangular enclosure with rampart and ditch typical of fortlets of c.0.1 ha; no significant modern excavation has been published, so internal layout, dating finds, and garrison size remain essentially unknown.
Redshaw Burn is a small Roman fortlet in the Southern Uplands of Scotland, located beside the Roman road running north from Crawford towards Castledykes, near the watershed between Annandale and Clydesdale. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a fortlet site from the Roman period in Britain.
Redshaw Burn is classified as a Roman fortlet — 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 Crawford (10.7 km), Tassiesholm (14 km), Wandel (15.4 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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