The large and well-defended fort of Trimontium lies in the heart of the central Scottish Borders, and for a time it was the most northerly outpost of Rome’s far-flung empire. It was also the setting for some macabre events not yet fully understood, and has preserved an astonishing array of finds from this period. Recent re-evaluation of some of these artefacts, coupled with state- of-the-art museum interpretation, have helped us reframe the story of the fort’s tempestuous past. But first, some background.
It now seems likely that considerable numbers of Roman troops, led by the imperial governor Quintus Petillius Cerialis, made forays into what is present-day Scotland in the early AD 70s, some three decades after the Claudian invasion had first reached Britain. History is created by those who write it down, however, and so, thanks to the great historian Tacitus, the glory for first driving Rome’s interests into the far north went to Gnaeus Julius Agricola (Tacitus’s father-in-law), who was governor in AD 77-84. Tacitus recorded that Agricola established strongpoints along the new invasion route, and we can be fairly sure that by the time the famous battle of Mons Graupius was fought somewhere north of Aberdeen in AD 83, his grip on the Scottish Lowlands was already tight.
One of the key power centres, which would have required close military control, was the heartland of the Selgovae, a people whose oppidum lay on the conspicuous summit of one of the three Eildon Hills near modern-day Melrose. The tribe’s massive 40-acre hillfort, which even today displays vestiges of hundreds of roundhouses, lay at the heart of an extensive web of subordinate hilltop settlements, many linked by miles of earthworks, cultivation terraces, and dykes. It therefore made good strategic sense for Agricola to place his premier lowland fort at the foot of the Eildon Hills and to construct a signal station on the summit.
The patron saint of spinners and spinsters