In the past year, with the expenditure of much effort, the Trust has managed to give visitors to the site, including walkers and passers-by, an introduction to the understanding of what they are actually looking at in the fields. We first of all selected our preferred locations for the boards in relation to the main stopping-places on the Walk. Historic Scotland in the person of Deirdre Cameron walked round and checked them with us and Col Younger of Ravenswood, the landowner and one of our Trustees, kindly agreed.

When we consulted Dr John Dent, archaeologist with Scottish Borders Council, he suggested that we go to the places on the site where it was planned to erect the information boards, and take a series of photographs of what we could see. Thereafter, for each locus we should join the photos together and ask John Martin, the local artist who has done so much work for us, to assimilate them into a pen and ink drawing . On to that scene John should then draw, in a different colour, an outline of the ‘ghostly’ Roman buildings, roads etc. This should be the simple, eye-catching feature of each board. Any text or illustrations should likewise be presented simply to the viewer. People are reckoned to spend about a minute and a half at an information board. We took the hint.

The original idea had been to set up lectern-type boards at all the locations. Out of the blue and giving a week to reply the Scottish Borders Tourist Board intimated a one-off, 50% grant for Visitor Attractions. Work in the Ormiston would not be possible. Could we think of say a couple of bigger information boards, like those on the Southern Upland Way? Within a month quotations had to be sought and submitted from builders and specialist artwork firms. We did it; the grant was agreed; the race was on, to finish in time.

We thought that we might put one of the bigger boards (4ft x 7ft) at the West end of the site ie Newstead and the other at the East end ie Leaderfoot. In relation to the latter we discovered that Tweed Forum was intending to erect its own information board at Leaderfoot, covering the three bridges. We quickly re-assigned our Eastern board very suitably up the hill to the layby opposite the amphitheatre. There was a simple seat there already. Our board included a seat. We would switch the existing seat to the vicinity of platform one, so that in due course people could contemplate the North Eildon in peace.

Our application for planning permission for the boards had referred to lectern-type boards. We had a word with SBC officials, who saw no objection to two larger boards being included, but we did not indicate the change to the nearest householders across the road in Rushbank, Newstead, who were taken aback when the bigger board was being erected. The board is such an attraction now and an amenity to the village that we hope our oversight has been forgiven.

The Spring and Summer were taken up with the planning of the layout of the boards, obtaining pictures from the National Museum and the Royal Commission, and learning the hard way, at Signmaster of Kelso, how the computer puts it all together. We had to remember that the background of each board was not to be white - too bright and off-putting.

Lunchtimes can be busy, and they were covered by Rita Anderson, Carolyn Riddell-Carre (who went on to higher things at CAB - but joined the Garrison) Ian Skinner and Barbara Elleflaadt - and Liz Ellis again. We are grateful to them all.

Sometimes we worry about the weekends - Saturday and Sunday - when our youthful cover is on. We manage, but if anyone was interested in helping, even at lunchtimes on these days, we should like to hear from them.

Dr Alistair King, retired eye surgeon, has delighted in telling the walkers about the sundials in his garden (one from 1683, made by the Mein family of stonemasons). The big one (see picture) with Alistair extolling its pub and Fairfax connections, bears the inscription ‘Sunshine and shade by turns, but love always’. Alistair is not so well and has given up his mini-lectures, which the Walk leaders try to maintain. We are very grateful to Alistair and his wife Betty for all they have done - and continue to do - as members of the Trust.

Walter Elliot, Chairman of the Trust, introduced Gordon Maxwell, the well-known aerial archaeologist (and Trimontium Trustee), who had described Trimontium as ‘the hub of Roman roads in Scotland’. With an apt quotation from Cicero’s De Finibus about the importance of everyman’s local history, he declared the replica milestone officially unveiled. The inscription simply reads, in four lines, ‘TRIMONTIUM CAPUT VIAE ANNO DOMINI 2000’ followed by a space (for future dating) and at the foot a quotation from Edgar Allen Poe, ‘The grandeur that was Rome’. CAPUT VIAE , literally ‘the head of the road’, is the technical term for the place from which Roman roads were measured.

A few yards away on the same verge Walter himself unveiled the first of five information boards along the closed road (now a processional way) to Leaderfoot.

Led by a detachment of the Antonine Guard, augmented by Trimontium’s own Melrose Festival soldier, Malcolm Crawford, the company made its way along the road, stopping at each unveiling or location for a ‘happening’. At the first viewing platform Kay Callander read from the preface to James Curle’s 1911 report of the 1905-10 excavations, ‘A Roman Frontier Post and its People’, including the line ‘I little dreamt how large an undertaking lay before me’.

At the Stone, Agricola (Councillor Bill Smith) and Calgacus (Donald Gordon) re-fought Tacitus’ version of the speeches before Mons Graupius. Unveiling the nearby board, Sandy Brownlie,a Gattonside member, read W H Auden’s ‘Roman Wall Blues’ (and trumped both Bill Smith and Walter by claiming to have been a KOSB Private to their Sergeant and Corporal).

At the second platform Nancy Finlay told Rosemary Sutcliff’s ‘Eagle of the Ninth’ story of a visit to the deserted Trimontium and a Roman soldier ‘gone native’; and after unveiling the big board at the East annexe (opposite the amphitheatre which he discovered), Dr Bill Lonie read Queen Victoria’s account of passing under the ‘immense’ Leaderfoot Viaduct in 1867.

Top billing was reserved for Grant Lees’ superb performance of Lord Macaulay’s ‘How Horatius kept the bridge’, an appropriate choice at the entrance to Old Drygrange Bridge. Ian McHaffie and Bill Lonie were his right and left-hand men. From the swearing of Lars Porsena to the saving of the city the company were treated to a rendition of such verve and vigour that even the ranks of yellow hard-hats on the 1974 A68 bridge under repair could scarce forbear to add their cheers to the thunderous response of the enthusiastic crowd.

Thus inspired, the advance continued across the Tweed, up the drive to Drygrange, round the house, down the splendid steps and finally on grass to the Summerhouse, built about 1908 by the landowner, apparently with over forty cartloads of stone from the Trimontium excavations (Curle pp48, 58, 142 - but no ‘arch’ to be seen today).

Although not yet fully completed inside, the work of Neil Galloway of Newstead, who also built the two large site boards, with their surrounding walls, was justly admired. Gordon Maxwell, having started the afternoon’s ‘openings’, similarly added the finishing touch with a quote from R L Stevenson about the usefulness to our understanding of the environment of such ‘fictions’ as the summerhouse, with its added touches of inserted mediaeval stones. After the votes of thanks to all concerned, including Jupiter Pluvius, the tea and home-made biscuits provided by the welcoming nursing home staff were much appreciated by Trust members who had come from as far away as Lancaster, Forfar and Helensburgh. Gordon Maxwell had gently inquired, in correspondence, if an appropriate sacrifice of animals eg a suovetaurilia, was to be made at the event. It was considered that enough blood, sweat and tears had been shed already, and , after tidying-up, (thanks, Isobel) the Trustees celebrated the Trust’s good fortune with a Newstead banquet.

• Mrs Nancy Little, Melrose, former teacher, wife of Mr Tom Little, both interested members of the Trust; (Tom’s continuing help with photos, slides and projector has been invaluable over the years;)
• Mrs Muriel Hood, Melrose, historian/ geographer, civil servant and editor of ‘Melrose 1826’, wife of Mr Stewart Hood, both interested members of the Trust;
• Mr Michael Bickmore, Selkirk, also a former teacher and member who liked to attend the lectures. He walked into the Exhibition one day and offered us his model villa and fort for use with children. We had the cheek not only to accept but to give him the amphitheatre-building kit as a challenge - which he not only accepted but capped, by joining the Garrison as a Covenanter.

Her preferred definition of the subject took in the study not only of past environments but also past activities, resources and people. Plants and pollen were the mainstay of the archaeobotanist. Core samples could be taken with rods of growing things, sealed in places like dome-shaped peat bogs over 10,000 years (so long as they were not dried out by modern drainage methods) to give a picture of what the environment might have been like eg when the Romans were here.

On we went through charcoal, carbonised seeds, tree bark, soil sampling, the sieving and flotation processes and the unfurling, with the aid of the microscope, of the stories of seemingly barren excavations (given the co-operation of otherwise puzzled archaeologists), after the tricky seven-stage process of boiling and adding acids and oils.

One of the examples was the care taken in the study of crannog pile construction and the work at Kenmore on Loch Tay; the hoovering-up of the silt for clues, and the continued preservation of the piles in situ in their watery environment.

It was a fascinating new tale for the Trust and its grip on the audience was mirrored by the totally unforced string of questions with which the speaker had to deal. Hilary Ford’s vote of thanks was enthusiastically endorsed, and the chairman professed himself much clearer about the mud-stirring he had had to do in recent excavations.

‘Trimontium to Turkey: an Empire away’

Kay Callander was the spokesman for the International Group (see some above) on Thursday 30 March when she showed slides of their stay in October ’99 among the classical ruins of Western Turkey viz Didyma, Miletus, Priene, Hierapolis (Pamukkale) and Ephesus itself. The oracle at Didyma (not a city) had rivalled Delphi and its Sacred Way had stretched to over a kilometre to Miletus. There had been a grandiose unfinished temple, with a forest of columns and a riot of decoration to the Twins - Apollo and Artemis - and a stadium for games. At the other end of the Sacred Way, Miletus, one of the greatest and richest of Greek cities, had the reputation of being rebuilt on the gridiron pattern by its famous planner, Hippodamus. Visited by Caesar and Mark Antony it was now far from the sea. With its huge theatre and extensive baths, much of the vast site was cordonned off now for safety reasons.

The party regarded Priene as the most spectacular site, with its crag and acropolis above the alluvial plain; its Ionic peripteral temple, painted red and blue; the agora; the theatre; and the Council Chamber, with the water clock.

Hierapolis, ‘Cotton Castle’, with its thermal springs and distinctive calcium-carbonate covered rocks, had a long arcaded street, 45 feet wide with side shops 20 feet deep, as well as baths and a huge necropolis. Ephesus, capital of the Roman province of Asia, was the home of the great temple of Artemis; the library of Celsus; and the scene of the riot provoked by the silversmiths against St Paul. Who could forget the view from the great hillside theatre, down the Arkadiane to the now-silted harbour, and the entrance to the temple of Hadrian - to name only two more of its treasures?

No summary could do justice to the wealth of historical and architectural detail that all the pictures summoned up.

In true Greek dramatic tradition Brian Ashby provided the appropriate hilarity at the end with his candid camera shots of how the party had coped with life in the sunshine of Turkey. Dr Bill Lonie, but lately returned from his own Middle East adventures, expressed our appreciation.

‘Everyday life at Winterton Iron Age farm and Romano-British villa’

Dr Roger Goodburn of Oxford gave the final lecture in the series on Thursday 6 April. Lecturer/Tutor in the University Department of Continuing Education he is a Romanist and friend of Prof Keppie. Winterton lies on the South bank of the Humber amid a network of Roman farms, settlements and villas, with Ermine Street coming from Lincoln (Lindum) and crossing the river to Brough (Petuaria) and on to York (Eboracum).

It had been excavated for ten years (1958-67) by Dr Ian Stead - and for a further twenty by Dr Goodburn, who had expected to be tidying up after his predecessor, but found instead that more and more discoveries were to be made.

It stood on a limestone escarpment and the finding of a mosaic in the 18th century, plus work done since, seemed to indicate the wing-house type of Romano-British villa. In advance of the quarrying for ironstone Dr Goodburn had discovered several aisled buildings, a large farm-crew courtyard (c200 feet square) and multiple ditches and fences (with squared-off timbers) in a c70 acre field system. There were traces of early occupation (2000 BC) and a continuation from Iron Age farming practices right into the Roman period (eg smarter ditches). There were the remains of transitional round houses, keeping to the traditional shape but using stone and Roman mortar, en route to the eventual acceptance of the rectangular form.

Dr Goodburn made use of two projectors, the one for keeping a plan before his audience and the other for exploring parts of the plan in detail.

It was the details which fascinated. The spade marks of the last Roman to clear out the ditch; the plough scratches in the limestone at the edges of the fields, showing changes in ploughing direction; the coins scattered in the U-shaped crew yard (would you go looking for your 10p in the sharn?); the grain beetle in the cattle bedding instead of the grain store; the building of a too-big corn dryer, and its subsequent reduction; the carbonised fig, date and grape seeds in the fields (ploughman’s lunch?); the sand blow; the topsoil falling into the emptied post-hole and showing it up as a stain in the sand; the Scandinavian- or German-type aisled buildings with load-bearing central posts and in-fill side walls; the soil erosion through poor drainage that brought the enterprise to an end - with a whimper; the 40 infant burials; and the lack of Saxon involvement in the site, except perhaps for the inhumations, without grave goods, presumably in the respected and then still-standing Roman buildings.

The pace was admirably suited to the audience, and the unfolding of the story and the answers to the many questions which followed the talk had a pleasing honesty and professional inevitability. Jill Campbell proposed the vote of thanks for a talk which had shared with us, in intriguing detail, an enthusiasm for not only the history of a Roman site but of the area and context around it. Members would look forward to the magnum opus on Winterton which Dr Goodburn would in due course be able to bring forth to the world of both scholars and general readers.

To-day we’re after something that no metal-detector can find: a single blue native bead, perhaps, or rarest of all a Roman sealstone fallen from a ring. Men wore these as thumb-rings to impress wax and their gem- stones often dropped out of the setting.

Even if we don’t find anything we are getting the fresh air. It’s impossible at first sight, there are so many sparkles and shards of light on top of the soil. Bits of red pebble, Victorian china and glass chips, and the natural chertz in various colours. Most deluding of all this fool’s gold is the live ladybird - just the size, colour and shape of an intaglio - when it shines on a spring day like today.

We walk some yards apart. Walter thinks that when you reach the age where you have to hold the newspaper down a bit to read the small print, at last your eyesight is perfect for fieldwalking. I try to look up about 3 ft ahead, at the same time as curving around, it reminds me of scything. We are stopping and stooping alternately, to turn up an unusual stone or a rim protruding from the earth. Here’s a palm-sized piece of amphora which shows the curve of the vessel. Perhaps it held olives of which only the stones remain. It’s my first find of the day but I know Walter spied it first. Half a field further on we’re pausing to raise our eyes to the surrounding landscape, to lengthen our sight and refresh our vision. Several times we cover our ears at the drum-splitting racket of warplanes in pairs slicing round the edge of the Eildon hills.

We are fieldwalking within the fort when we come across bits of fine red Samian ware, and rarer black Samian, the high-class pottery of the time. We’re inside somebody’s house. I see what I take to be a bit of broken Victorian marble, or natural rock crystal. I pick it up, turn it over.

‘Is this anything, Walter?’

It’s yellow translucent glass, a beautiful colour in the morning light. I turn it over and my heart stops. It’s inlaid with a trail of pattern, layers of white and opaque yellow. ‘Is this anything, Walter?’

‘Aye, it’s a Roman armlet. I’ve had blue and green ones, but never yellow. This is rare, this is precious. It’ll need to be recorded.’

I’m jumping up and down for joy, wellies taking me down deeper in the mud. A big hug for Walter. The fragment of armlet shines golden in the daylight, brightly coloured and crystalline as if somebody’s glass bangle had just broken this minute, not 2,000 years ago. Who wore it, she or he? Someone who lived inside the fort, not down at the glassmakers’ quarters or out in the settlement. Someone who had the only yellow glass circlet among all the blue-green ones.

We’re moving gradually towards the fence. The heavy rain has turned up all new stuff, washed by a fresh shower, and the sun is shining on it. In the side of a large clod I’m staring at something I recognise from museums and from looking at Walter’s collection. A bean-shaped Roman gaming-counter used in board games. When I was scriptwriter for the schools’ TV series ‘Caledonians and Romans’ I wrote a scene for two child actors playing a board game.

Now the scene I visualised leaps out at me . I pick the glass counter up, it can’t be...but it is. I call out, ‘Walter, I’ve fffound aaa...’ I can’t speak. The first to touch it. All those human hands before mine, moving it across the board, then the darkness of the ruins, the depth of earth, then working its way back up through the seasons of ploughing, to me. Nobody could appreciate it more than I do at this moment.

‘Aye, ye’ve found a wee playing-man. They’re quite common. No sae mony nowadays, though’.

It’s Walter who has helped me to recognise what I’m looking at. Later, he tells everyone there are two big long scuff-marks in the field where I dug my heels in when he had to drag me away from the perfect day’s fieldwalking.

Even if there’s never another day, this is the one, the find-day of a lifetime. What I’ve learnt from Walter Elliot is that we’re surrounded by differences in time and space. We don’t just live in the present, we live in the past and in the future, we live at all times’.

I would recommend Trimontium to anyone wanting to learn more about the Romans. I go there every couple of months and never get fed up with it - there is always something new to do or see and everyone makes you feel really welcome. If you ever come to the Borders you should go along to see for yourself what a brill place it is. Then you will understand why Trimontium is “my favourite place”. I have spent three years in the Borders YAC and I still love it.’

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YAC starts again this Spring and volunteer helpers and parents are welcome. Details to be circulated - promise!

On Saturday 8 July a coachload of members, friends and a Young Archaeologist, visited South Shields, to see the Roman fort of Arbeia (photo 1); Wallsend, in North Shields, to view the newly-opened Segedunum site and its huge observation tower (photo 2, showing the bath-house in the corner); Brigantium centre (photo 3) at High Rochester; and Bremenium fort behind it (photo 4 of possible barrack wall).

It was lunchtime at Segedunum, the fort at (Hadrian’s) Wallsend, and the three-course pensioners’ lunch went down a treat with those so entitled. Opened on 17 June the site took the breath away, as well it might, having cost £7 million. Among the high industrial buildings and and cranes beside the River Tyne the splendid many-storeyed observation tower fitted into the environment, giving a spaceship view of the fort layout. In the corner stood the reconstructed bath-house (which can be hired out for bathing parties) where some ladies sat on the communal loo (see p 6 ). It has the ‘clothes-locker’ entrance hall and all the classic rooms from the cold plunge to the really hot rooms, which misted up the visitors’ spectacles.

As for the museum itself, beside the tower, it is built in the shape of a fort HQ building and contains all the ‘push-button’ interactive models that modern youth - and age - could desire. The Trimontium party was simply gobsmacked by, and envious of, it all. In its deprived area it deserves all the visitors it can get. The signposting along the roads to it is superb - another point for Borders reference.

On the road home, Brigantium’s cafe-stop preceded a tour of that site and its replicas, including the high, cone-shaped, thatched-roof, stone-walled, log-burning roundhouse. Skilful coach manoeuvres allowed a quick look at the layout, the West Gate, and a possible still-standing barrack wall at Bremenium (photo 4), occupied for three or four times as long as Trimontium. In both the imagination still is king. (We’ll go back sometime and see the Dere Street tombs and the soldiers’ cemetery).