Lynn and Blue the Elephant have had a very educational adventure this week. Lynn took Blue on the back of her bike and they cycled to Roman Road in Bearsden and discovered an exciting piece of local archaeology.
Lynn and Blue found the remains of a Roman Bath House
Archaeology is when people find out about the olden days by digging in the ground. Sometimes they find bits of buildings, sometimes they find things that people left behind – like pots, or hair combs or even shoes! The people who do archaeology are called archaeologists.
About 30 years ago, some builders were digging the foundations to build flats on in Bearsden, when they came across some very old foundations, already in the ground. They phoned some archaeologists who came along and helped dig and they uncovered something very old and exciting. They found buildings from nearly 2000 years ago.
2000 years ago, a great big army came from Rome, in Italy to conquer England and Scotland. They were called Romans. The North of Scotland was just a bit too
wild for the Romans so they decided to build a big wall right across the country to stop the wild people from coming in. It was called the Antonine Wall and it went right through Bearsden. The army that built the wall also built themselves camps to stay in – there were no hotels in Milngavie in those days!
The Romans were quite clean people – they liked to have warm baths after their mucky work of building the wall. In Bearsden, they built themselves a Bath House. It had underfloor heating and a steam room and a big bath – not as big as a swimming pool but big enough to let lots of people have a bath together. They heated the water for the baths and the underfloor heating with a big furnace which worked by burning wood and coal to heat the water.
The Romans were also quite tough people – once they had been in the lovely hot bath, they liked to jump right into a big bath of freezing cold water to cool off.
Brrrr! Blue doesn’t like the idea of a cold bath!
“This would have been a very big bath! I could have had a bath with all my friends at once!” thinks Blue!
Blue loves climbing on the old walls and trying to imagine what it looked like.
Luckily, the archaeologists had left some pictures of what it might have been like.
“What’s a latrine, Lynn?” asked Blue. “Its the word used for camp toilets!” said Lynn.
Yes – the archaeologists even dug up the building where the Roman’s toilets had been. They discovered they wiped their bottoms on bits of moss. They even managed to find a 2000 year old sewer that had Roman poo in it and from that they discovered some of the things that Romans ate!!!! “OOOOH YUCK! I’m quite glad I’m not an archaeologist!!! ” says Blue.
Blue learned lots about the Romans and their bath house when he looked at the signs. Lynn read the words and together they found out lots of Roman facts.
Maybe you will visit the Roman Bath House yourselves and enjoy exploring the ruins. It’s open to the public all the time – even at the moment and you can wander in and discover how Romans kept clean!
The address of the site is
8 Roman Court
Bearsden
G61 2HS.
