The Amphitheatre
The Most Northerly and Westerly military Amphitheatre in the Roman Empire
It was on 24 August 79AD that Vesuvius erupted, destroying Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae in the Bay of Naples.
Dr Simon Clarke's announcement on Saturday 24 August 1996 that the Leaderfoot Brae Hollow is a Roman amphitheatre of the 1st or 2nd century AD may not be of the same order of magnitude, but is a high point in the study of the huge military complex of Trimontium - the place of the Three Peaks - at the village of Newstead, near Melrose, in the Scottish Borders.
Trimontium, which translates to Triple Mountain, from its situation at the foot of the Eildons, was the Roman Army HQ in Southern Scotland. The fort and the Romano-Celtic annexes (mini-townships and industrial estates) all round it, together with the field system, cover 370 acres. The Trimontium Stone, erected at the north-west corner of the fort in 1928, tells the tale.
Revealed near Newstead by the railway builders in the mid-nineteenth century, it was excavated between 1905 and 1910 by James Curle of Melrose and his 'A Roman Frontier Post and its People' in 1911 showed the vastly extensive range of artefacts discovered, from magnificent cavalry parade helmets to ordinary industrial and domestic items. It forms the core of the national Roman collections in the Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh.
The Amphitheatre
This discovery is yet another exciting finding of Bradford University Archaeological Studies Dept, which worked at the Trimontium site, originally under Dr RFJ Jones and then under Dr Simon Clarke, from 1987 to 1998. Their report is expected in 2006/2007 and will follow in the steps of Curle (1905-10); Richmond (1947); and St Joseph (aerial photography 1948-75). A large amount of information relating to the archaeology of the Trimontium site at Newstead can be found at Dr Simon Clarke's UHI Communities page.
The amphitheatre is the first to be discovered in Roman Scotland and, so far, the most northerly in the Roman Empire. (There is possibly another at Inveresk near Edinburgh.) As the Roman Army HQ in Southern Scotland it is not surprising that a fort housing up to 2,500 men at one point in the 2nd century should have had an arena for weapon training, displays of martial skills and exhorting the troops, at a convenient point near its North East corner.