An Audio this time recorded in Strathclyde Country Park just outside of Motherwell in Scotland.
The park lies in 400ha of countryside in the valley of the river Clyde and is an area comprising of mature woodlands, rough wetlands, wildlife refuges and open parkland all surrounding Strathclyde Loch.
Within the park there are the remains of Bothwellhaugh Roman Fort & Bathhouse and in this 20 minute audio I take a look at the Roman Fort & Bathhouse as it is now and as it would have been back in the 2nd century.
The bathhouse was central to Roman society and was often one of the first buildings to be erected and as well as being a place for hygiene it was also a very social place to be. The bathhouse would have been used by the Roman soldiers of the nearby Bothwellhaugh Fort which was occupied between 142AD to 162AD and had in the region of 500 Roman soldiers garrisoned there.
The fort of which little remains now, was neither square or rectangular in plan but it was instead a rhomboid with no two walls the same length and no two angles the same. There is evidence of two phases of construction at both the Fort and the Bathhouse.
Click to Play or download - Strathclyde Roman Fort & Bathhouse
I also take a look at the Antonine wall built by the Romans between the Forth and Clyde in honour of Antoninus Pius by Lollius Urbicus the Governor of Britain around 143AD.
The wall marks the northern most frontier of the Roman Empire and it consisted of a continuous rampart wall and ditch running some 39 miles from Bridgeness in Edinburgh on the Firth of Fourth to Old Kilpatrick on the outskirts of Glasgow near Dumbarton on the Firth of Clyde. The wall was fortified with around 19 forts along it's length at 2 mile intervals and was garrisoned by around 30,000 Roman soldiers.
By 180AD the Antonine wall had been abandoned with the tribes to the North finally driving the Romans back to Hadrians wall far to the South in England.
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