Miles without Stiles: Cawthorn Roman Camps

History

Cawthorn Roman Camps, on the Tabular Hills north-west of Pickering, are a group of Roman military earthworks that the North York Moors National Park Authority owns and manages. This one-mile loop starts in the corner of the car park and follows marker posts carved with a Roman soldier's head, past a viewing platform; it has no steps or stiles. The Authority's 'Edge of Empire' interpretation panels describe three fortifications, two forts (one with an annexe) and a temporary camp built to an unusual plan, and place them among the camps and forts the Romans built along their military roads after they began occupying the territory of the Brigantes in AD 71. The walk page adds that the Home Guard trained on the site in the Second World War.

Plans of the earthworks were published in 1736, and Sir Ian Richmond excavated them in the 1920s and called them practice camps of about AD 90 to 110. A 1995 survey by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England reinterpreted them as two forts, an annexe and a camp, and English Heritage and the National Park dug two seasons in 1999 and 2000, which confirmed the broad dating and found well-preserved turf buildings of the Roman military in one fort and its annexe. The Authority now says the site probably had a strategic role in controlling local tribes, and perhaps housed troops for short periods while military roads were built.