Bothwellhaugh Roman Fort

In the Roman period, Bothwellhaugh stood above a strategic crossing point where the road known as Watling Street bridged the South Calder Water near its confluence with the River Clyde. Old maps show the Roman road before the Clyde was diverted and before the fort was rediscovered.

The fort was built in a scalene right quadrilateral pattern and was large enough to house both troops and cavalry. Its road links probably connected it to sites on the Antonine Wall and southwards to Castledykes, although the exact routes remain a matter of ongoing study.

A Roman structure at Bothwellhaugh was mentioned in the Dalziel section of the Old Statistical Account, preserving a clue to the site's identity before modern archaeological rediscovery.

In 1925 J. M. Davidson rediscovered the fort. That rediscovery restored Bothwellhaugh to the Roman map of central Scotland and linked the site again with the wider military landscape around Motherwell, Hamilton and Bellshill.

In November 1973, a Roman bath house was found beneath a pond between the fort and the medieval bridge anachronistically named Roman Bridge. Lawrence Keppie directed the complete excavation in 1975-76, revealing a suite of rooms: vestibule, frigidarium, two tepidaria, caldarium and praefurnium.

In 1980 the bath house was moved to higher ground and is now open to the public. Its scale suggests that perhaps around 20 soldiers could use it at one time, while the distance between the baths and fort hints that other structures may still lie undiscovered.

The excavations produced hundreds of artefacts, including a Roman drain cover slab, a hunt cup and a tile with a paw print. Pottery from the site established an Antonine occupation, but exactly how Bothwellhaugh related to the Antonine Wall is still unclear.