Antonine Wall N of Cumbernauld Airfield to Wyndford Road Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK

Scheduled Monument Description

This monument is a section of the Antonine Wall which runs to the north of Cumbernauld airfield and Wardpark Industrial Estate, from a field boundary 300m E of Westerwood steading to Wyndford Road.

This proposal forms part of a programme which is intended to update the scheduling of the Antonine Wall, and extends the protected area along this part of the line of the Wall. It replaces two existing scheduled areas with a single one, and includes an area in the Guardianship of the Secretary of State for Scotland.

The Antonine Wall at this location consists of the rampart, the ditch, the berm (area between rampart and ditch), the upcast mound and the Military Way. The ditch is well-preserved through this section, and the upcast mound is also well-preserved, particularly in the eastern half of this section, where it is in state Guardianship. The rampart has been largely flattened, but it has been shown that substantial remains of the frontier system survive along this length. Excavations in 1979 found that up to 6 layers of turves were preserved on top of the stone rampart base, and that some repairs had been made to the rampart during the lifetime of the Wall. A stone platform had also been added to the southern side of the rampart, measuring some 12m long by 1.8m wide; this seemed rather too substantial for a repair, and bore traces of burning.

The area to be scheduled measures a maximum of 1560m between its extreme E and W points by a maximum of 120m N-S. The N-S width of the area to be scheduled varies according to the nature of the remains and the possibility of the survival of traces of activities associated with the construction and use of the monument, as shown in red on the accompanying map extract. The top 50cm of the farm tracks which run through the scheduled area is excluded from the scheduling to enable the top surface to be altered without written consent.