Gask Ridge

The Gask Ridge is the modern name given to an early series of fortifications, built by the Romans in Scotland, close to the Highland Line.

[8] The fortifications approximately follow the boundary between Scotland's fertile Lowlands and mountainous Highlands, in Perth and Kinross and Angus.

A broader group consists of Cardean, Stracathro and Doune are sited further away from their respective traffic corridors, although fulfilling the same function.

[12] This may have been the intention, in cooperation with the other forts on the Gask Ridge and along Strathmore, as only the legionary fortress of Inchtuthil with 5,000–6,000 soldiers would have been strong enough to deal with a major incursion.

[14] Recent research suggests that the three elements are part of the same frontier system, stretching roughly from Loch Lomond to Montrose.

Only the legionary fortress at Inchtuthil, conveniently situated for access into Braemar and its hinterland, is large enough to have functioned as a defensive fortification or a jumping-off point for an invasion.

The Gask Road and the towers alongside it in this hypothesis guarded the strategically important link to the harbours at the Firths of Tay and Forth and the southern part of the province.

The Roman legions in the 1st century established a chain of forts at Ardoch, Strageath, Inchtuthil, Battledykes (which is unlikely to date from the same period as the Gask sites), Stracathro and Raedykes, taking the Elsick Mounth on the way to Normandykes, before going north to Glenmaillen and Auchinhove.