Milefortlet 9

Milefortlet 9 stands in a flat field north-east of Skinburness village in Cumbria. It formed part of Rome’s coastal line of small forts and watchtowers along the Cumbrian shore. The outline of its ramparts appears on wartime air photographs taken in 1949. The fortlet measured roughly sixty-five metres by sixty-one metres and may have had an outer ditch. Nearby cropmarks show pits and ditches, though it is not clear which belong to the fort. In 1866 a Roman altar to the Matres was dug up on the nearby beach and now lies in the British Museum. The next fort to the north is Milefortlet 5 across Moricambe Bay. Milefortlets 8, 7 and 6 were once thought lost to the sea, but no evidence of them survives. The chain therefore appears to skip from Milefortlet 9 straight to Milefortlet 5. Each milefortlet had two small towers placed about one-third and two-thirds of a Roman mile to the west. These towers would have been manned by detachments from the nearest fortlet. The coastline curves round Moricambe Bay with wide tidal flats. Tower 9A and Tower 9B, the two towers linked to Milefortlet 9, have been built over and their exact spots are uncertain. The field where the fortlet once stood is quiet farmland today, its buried walls visible only from the air.