York Historic Environment Record

The site of a Roman Camp was noted by William Stukeley in his diary of June 1740: “a mile
and ½ off York we crosst a Roman camp upon the common” (Lukis 1885, 380). The York
antiquarian Francis Drake wrote an annotation in the margin of page 37 of his own copy of
his book ‘Eboracum’, which reads: “I have lately discovered in the forrest about a mile from
the city three camps, the largest of them very near and opposite to a farmhouse now known
as Kettlestring’s House. They lye and are of the dimensions and form as they appear in the
plan. I take them by their shape to be certainly Roman.” (Ramm 1952, 15-16). In a letter
from Drake to Stukeley two years later, he states that there are ‘no less than seven or eight
[camps] of different sizes’ in the same location (Lukis 1885, 352). He writes that a measured
plan was made, which sadly appears to have been lost. There appears to have been some
disagreement about the dating of these between Drake and Stukeley, Drake having decided
his original interpretation to have been mistaken (Ramm 1952, 16).

Two of these camps were rediscovered from aerial photography in 1952. The two camps were listed as Scheduled ancient monuments in 1963.

The new camp is highly comparable in size with the scheduled camps nearby although
the surviving banks are ephemeral. The banks of the camp are around 0.2-0.3m in height in the few best preserved areas, with the majority being less pronounced. On the site visit, it was noted that there is evidence of damage to the banks by post-medieval ploughing, which is not hugely visible in the Lidar.

Unlike the other two camps this one is not visible on any known aerial photographs of the area. It is not certain why this could be, but one difference could be that the new camp is - at least partially - situated on a piece of ground which is very marginally higher ground. The area requires
much drainage and is often waterlogged, and so this may go some way to explaining this
difference in visibility. It is possible that the damage by ploughing may post-date both
Stukeley and Drake’s observations, and may help explain the loss of these sites in the
interim, though this cannot be confirmed as the separation of the furrows suggests a broadly
post-medieval date.

University of York, 2022, The Rediscovery of a Roman Camp on Bootham Stray (Unpublished document). SYO2930.