This is a scanned image of the aerial photo that is in the archives of the Royal Commission in Edinburgh. This image is scanned from the paper copy I received, which explains a few water splotches that it suffered when I had it out in the field on a damp day.
The original image was submitted to RCAHMS by Professor Hanson but there is no date on it. This view is looking toward the northwest. The flow of the River Clyde on the left half of this picture is due north and then at the center of the picture it bends to the north-northeast.
The thin dark line near the center of this picture in the shape of a backward L with a rounded corner was probably one corner and portions of two sides of a defensive trench around a rectangular structure. The trench line looks very similar to those around the Trimontium Roman fort near Melrose, though this is likely to be a far smaller enclosure. Without detailed excavation, one can not say for sure that this was a fortified Roman camp.
This picture shows that both ends of the L-shaped trench end at a broad swath of lighter-colored soil. Standing in the field it is easy to see that the ground level becomes lower along that swath, suggesting that river floods washed away the level of the ground leaving a concentration of gravel on the bank. In other words, it appears that the other three corners of the defensive trench have been washed away by the river.
In recent centuries low earthen dikes have been built to keep flood water out of the field. In the previous picture, the panoramic view, the low dike that extends straight east from the river is visible. It is also visible near the center of this aerial image.
The broad light-colored swath that extends left-to-right in this aerial view (southeast of the L-shaped trench) is where I probed the field and found what seemed to be bottoming stones. Note that the broad swath angling away from the river at about a 45 degree angle ends at the swath parallel to the river where floods had eroded away the soil leaving a gravel bank.
Along the right edge of this aerial photo there could be one or two swaths of gravel converging on the only exit from this field, just beyond the lower right corner of this picture.
On the far (west) bank of the river, the modern Clyde Valley Road is seen crossing the upper left corner of this picture. The fence line down to the river from Threepwood Farm driveway can be seen in the upper center of this picture. The postulated up-river crossing would have been at or near the lower left edge of this picture.
|
|