The biggest-ever exploration of one of Renfrewshire’s most mysterious historical features is now underway – and hopes to unveil some centuries-old secrets.

An archaeological dig led by GUARD Archaeology has started at Paisley’s Abbey Drain – a complex underground structure which links the town’s 850-year-old Abbey to the River Cart. The 100m long underground passageway, thought to be more than 700 years old, was unearthed in the 19^th century and rediscovered in the 1990s. The Big Dig hopes to uncover more about the passageway and reveal more about life in Paisley hundreds of years ago.

Initial excavations of the site unearthed the earliest polyphonic musical notation and the largest collection of medieval pottery ever found in western Scotland – and it is hoped that this two-month long project will uncover many more secrets.

The Big Dig also includes an extensive programme of activity to involve the local community. Students at the University of the West of Scotland will create a series of short films and a documentary on the drain, and there will also be school visits, volunteering opportunities, and free talks and workshops for the public.

Members of the public will not have access to the drain during the Big Dig – but there will be a chance for residents and visitors to go inside it, as in previous years, during the Doors Open Days weekend on 7 and 8 September. To keep an eye on Big Dig progress, visit www.paisley.is

The dig is managed by Renfrewshire Council, run by GUARD Archaeology with help from Renfrewshire Local History Forum volunteers, and supported by funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic Environment Scotland. 

GUARD Archaeologists have discovered a hitherto unknown Roman marching camp that was constructed during the Roman conquest of Scotland, new publications reveal.

The discovery was made during archaeological excavations undertaken by GUARD Archaeology prior to the building of the new Ayr Academy in 2015. At the time it was not obvious that a Roman camp had been found, because there were no Roman artefacts present, only fragments of much earlier Neolithic pottery and an Iron Age bangle from a seemingly random spread of pits and post-holes. However, during the subsequent post-excavation analyses, radiocarbon dates revealed a regular pattern of features that date to the Roman conquest of Scotland in the latter part of the first century AD.

‘The Roman features comprised 26 large, often double, fire-pits that were distributed evenly in two parallel rows 30m apart,’ said Iraia Arabaolaza, who directed the excavation. ‘The arrangement and uniformity of these features implies an organised layout and the evidence suggests that they were all used for baking bread. The location of the oven was recognised by the scorching of the subsoil base, stone slabs and burnt clay fragments, some with wood imprints and with dome moulding. Ash pits were identified at the opposite end to the ovens within these figure-of-eight features, filled with burnt and charcoal-rich soil comprising the raked-out material from the clay-domed ovens.’

The radiocarbon dates from these fire-pits overlapped between the years AD 77-86 and AD 90, which accords with the conquest of Scotland by the Roman general Agricola from AD 79 until AD 83 and the subsequent Roman consolidation. Agricola’s son-in-law, Tacitus, who wrote an account of the yearly campaigns, reported that “in the fifth campaign, Agricola, crossing over, subdued, by frequent and successful engagements, several nations till then unknown; and stationed troops in that part of Britain which is opposite to Ireland.”

Until now, the only two known routes for the Roman invasion of southern Scotland were further to the east; the present-day M74 and A68 roads follow these same courses. But the new marching camp at Ayr reveals another route down the west coast towards the south-west tip of Scotland, from where Ireland is readily visible.

‘There was a ford across the river Ayr just below the Roman marching camp while ships may have been beached on the nearby shoreline’ said Iraia Arabaolaza. ‘The Ayr marching camp is 20 miles from the nearest Roman camp to the south at Girvan, which corresponds to a day’s march for a Roman soldier. There is a little more distance to other Roman camps to the north-east near Strathaven. Altogether this suggests that this site was chosen as a strategic location for the Roman conquest of Ayrshire.’

Roman marching camps have been described as the temporary bases of a tented army on campaign. Whilst most Roman camps are usually recognised by the regular linear ditches that enclose them, landscaping or ploughing at the Ayr Academy site appears to have destroyed any such remains. The camp at Ayr Academy, however, shares other similarities with Roman camps in Scotland, which have also revealed similar formations of fire-pits or camp-ovens. The distance of 30m between the two rows of fire-pits at Ayr Academy accords closely to the length of area allocated to the ten tents of a century in ancient Roman military manuals. The rectangular formation of fire-pits at Ayr Academy may represent the ground where up to eight centuries, amounting to 640 legionaries, were once encamped. It is also possible that the archaeological remains only represent a portion of the camp, which may have extended into the flat land to the north, where the modern racecourse is situated.

The Romans, of course, were not the first people to occupy this site. While little trace of the local Iron Age people was recovered during the excavation, save a fragment of a shale bracelet which might date to this same period, the GUARD archaeologists uncovered numerous pits and post-holes that date to much earlier times.

Evidence for Bronze Age ritual activity from the late third and second millennium BC, a Neolithic settlement from the fourth millennium BC and a Mesolithic hunter/gatherer camp from the sixth millennium BC was also discovered, revealing this to be one of the earliest and most complex prehistoric sites in this area of the west coast of Scotland. To put this into perspective, the earliest occupation of the Ayr Academy site goes back to around 5200 BC, roughly 2½ times as old as the Roman Marching Camp is to us. As the excavation at Ayr Academy demonstrates, Scotland was not an untouched wild landscape that the Romans marched into in AD 79 but already an ancient land inhabited by communities whose culture and heritage stretched back millennia.

The archaeological work was funded by Kier Construction Ltd and was required as a condition of planning consent by South Ayrshire Council who are advised on archaeological matters by the West of Scotland Archaeology Service, who considered there to be a potential for hitherto unknown archaeology to be buried at the site due to the proximity of known prehistoric archaeology.

A Roman Marching Camp in Ayr by Iraia Arabaolaza is published in the Britannia Journal, while ARO33: Beside the River Ayr in prehistoric times: excavations at Ayr Academy by Iraia Arabaolaza is freely available to download from Archaeology Reports Online.