Ardunie Roman Signal Station
About
Professor O.G.S. Crawford uncovered this signal tower in 1937, finding a circular timber platform about 12 meters across set just south of the Roman road running along the Gask Ridge. It formed one link in the earliest fortified frontier line anywhere in the Roman Empire, built to watch the country north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus during Rome's brief advance into the Scottish Highlands. Only the ditch and outer bank survive today; the army abandoned the whole Gask system in 87 CE, three decades before this snapshot, when it pulled back from Scotland entirely.
What happened here
A small stone tower with a timber top, sited so that it can see the next one along the line. Half a dozen men live in it. They watch the ground in front, and they watch the tower on either side. A signal — fire and smoke at night, something visible by day — passes a warning down the chain far faster than a rider can, though it can only carry a message that was agreed in advance. The rest of the time it is a lookout post on a road, a river crossing or a frontier line, and the work is boredom punctuated by inspections. Supplies come up from the fort behind. Towers on a frontier stand within sight of each other for hundreds of miles.
Sources
Nearby
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