The Roman camp north-east of Bellshiel Bridge lies in the upper Redesdale valley in the Cheviot foothills of Northumberland, on the line of Dere Street as it climbs towards the Scottish border. It is one of a series of temporary marching camps in this corridor, likely constructed during campaigning movements in the late 1st or 2nd century AD to accommodate troops on the move between the Hadrianic frontier and lowland Scotland. The camp would have housed a transient force of perhaps a few cohorts, defined by a turf rampart and external ditch enclosing a roughly rectangular area.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site forms part of the strategically vital Redesdale route, complementing nearby installations such as the fort and camps at Bremenium (High Rochester) and the well-known Chew Green complex, and reflects the repeated Roman penetration of the Cheviots during the Flavian, Antonine and Severan campaigns. Its position alongside a prehistoric round cairn also illustrates the Roman reuse of an already long-established upland landscape.
The camp is known principally from earthwork survey, with low rampart banks and traces of ditches visible on the ground and in aerial photography; no significant modern excavation has been published. As with comparable Redesdale camps, dating rests on morphology and topographic association rather than stratified finds.
The Roman camp north-east of Bellshiel Bridge lies in the upper Redesdale valley in the Cheviot foothills of Northumberland, on the line of Dere Street as it climbs towards the Scottish border. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a military camp site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman camp and prehistoric round cairn 700m north-east of Bellshiel Bridge 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, 750m SSW of Sills Farm (0.7 km), Roman camp, 400m SSW of Sills Farm (0.8 km), Roman camp, 250m north-west of Silloans (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 and prehistoric round cairn 700m north-east of Bellshiel Bridge