Bar Hill Fort

Bar Hill Fort was a Roman fort on the Antonine Wall in Scotland. Older maps and documents sometimes spell the name as Barr Hill. A computer generated fly around for the site and an animation of a Roman shoe have been produced. Sir George Macdonald wrote about the excavation of the site. Many other artefacts have also been found at Shirva, about a mile away on the other side of Twechar.

Many Roman forts along the wall held garrisons of around 500 men. Larger forts like Castlecary and Birrens had a nominal cohort of 1000 men but probably sheltered women and children as well although the troops were not allowed to marry. There is likely too to have been large communities of civilians around the site.

In 1895 an altar to Silvanus, believed to have come from a small shrine outside the fort, was discovered on Bar Hill. The altar is now kept in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow along with others like the one found at Castlecary. Numerous objects were found thrown down the well, probably at the time the fort was abandoned. These include shoes from men, women and children, an altar, building columns, wooden beams, part of the pulley of the well, bones, shells and coins. Videos of some reconstructed objects like a barrel, a window. and various columns have been produced as well as one of a bust of Silenus.

Bar Hill Fort was one of around 16 known forts along the Antonine Wall, which was built across Scotland’s central belt from AD 140. The wall formed the north-western frontier of the Roman Empire. The largest visible building is the headquarters, placed on the south-facing slope of the hill. Possibly the most impressive building is the bathhouse, which originally stood close to the north wall of the fort on the fairly steep northern slope of the hill.