Parkneuk Signal Tower

Turris Parkneuk

Signal TowerBritannia · Innerpeffray Wood, near Crieff, Perthshire, ScotlandBuilt 80 CE · Destroyed 87 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

Excavators in March 1968 uncovered a small wooden tower here, roughly 3 by 3.7 meters, ringed by a clay rampart and a single ditch with a causeway facing the road on its north side. Standing near the western end of the Gask Ridge chain, it kept visual contact with its neighbors along Rome's earliest fortified land frontier. The post went out of use in 87 CE when the army abandoned Scotland altogether, decades before this snapshot.

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.