The Roman camp at Silloans lies on the moorland of Upper Coquetdale in Northumberland, part of a remarkable cluster of temporary marching camps grouped around the major fort and supply base at Chew Green, on the line of Dere Street as it crosses the Cheviots into Scotland. Silloans is one of several large camps in this concentration, likely used during campaigns or troop movements into Scotland, with probable phases in the Flavian (late 1st century AD), Antonine (mid-2nd century), or Severan (early 3rd century) periods.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The camp's position on Dere Street, the principal Roman road from York to the Forth, makes it part of the strategic infrastructure for projecting force into northern Britain, providing overnight accommodation for substantial bodies of troops on the march. The Chew Green/Silloans complex is one of the most important concentrations of temporary camps in Roman Britain, illustrating the repeated use of this corridor across multiple campaigns.
The camp survives as upstanding earthworks of rampart and ditch on open moorland, recorded by aerial photography and ground survey (notably by the RCHME and as part of broader studies of Dere Street camps by St Joseph and others), but it has not been subject to modern excavation, so its precise date and garrison size remain undetermined. Its plan, gateways with tituli or claviculae, and relationship to neighbouring camps are known primarily from morphological
The Roman camp at Silloans lies on the moorland of Upper Coquetdale in Northumberland, part of a remarkable cluster of temporary marching camps grouped around the major fort and supply base at Chew Green, on the line of Dere Street as it crosses the Cheviots into Scotland. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a military camp site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman camp, 250m north-west of Silloans 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 Roman camp, 400m SSW of Sills Farm (0.7 km), Roman camp and prehistoric round cairn 700m north-east of Bellshiel Bridge (1 km), Roman Camp, 750m SSW of Sills Farm (1.1 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Roman camp, 250m north-west of Silloans