Ardotalia

Ardotalia is a Roman fort near Glossop in Derbyshire’s High Peak. Known also as Melandra Castle, it sits on a high dark hill above the surrounding valleys. The fort was built by the First Cohort of Frisiavones, a thousand-strong unit of specialist craftsmen from low-lying lands beyond the Rhine. They were helped by the 3rd Cohort of Bracara Augustani, Iberian Celts from Braga in Portugal who had experience of hilly terrain. Evidence of their work survives in building stones, diplomas and Roman writings. The fort’s layout shows four detached corner towers and two ditches on two sides. Charles Roeder recorded walls four feet thick, built with large boulders set in clay and faced with dressed stones. A double-arched gateway with a portcullis stood at the south-west entrance, while a gravel road thirteen feet wide led away from it. Inside, excavators found a praetorium of three rooms, a granary with tiled floors and a workshop beside the road. Today Ardotalia is a Scheduled Ancient Monument on the Heritage at Risk Register. A track called Doctor’s Gate still links the fort to Navio at Brough-on-Noe, once thought to be a Roman road. Pottery fragments from the first and second centuries lie buried beneath the grassy slopes, and coins from Domitian and Hadrian have been recovered. The remains stand on sharp slopes, defended naturally where ditches were absent, waiting for further excavation.