Built some twenty years after Hadrian's Wall to the south, and intended to supersede it, while it was garrisoned it was the northernmost frontier barrier of the Roman Empire.

The Antonine Wall was protected by 16 forts with small fortlets between them; troop movement was facilitated by a road linking all the sites known as the Military Way.

The soldiers who built the wall commemorated the construction and their struggles with the Caledonians with decorative slabs, twenty of which survive.

[6] Quintus Lollius Urbicus, governor of Roman Britain at the time, initially supervised the effort, which may have taken as long as twelve years.

As built, the wall was typically a bank, about three metres (10 feet) high, made of layered turves and occasionally earth with a wide ditch on the north side, and a military way on the south.

In addition a number of forts further north were brought back into service in the Gask Ridge area, including Ardoch, Strageath, Bertha (Perth)[10] and probably Dalginross and Cargill.

Nevertheless, they carried it for many miles between the two bays or inlets of the sea of which we have spoken; to the end that where the protection of the water was wanting, they might use the rampart to defend their borders from the irruptions of the enemies.

It begins at about two miles' distance from the monastery of Aebbercurnig [Abercorn], west of it, at a place called in the Pictish language Peanfahel, but in the English tongue, Penneltun [Kinneil], and running westward, ends near the city of Aicluith [Dumbarton].

And he would appear to have believed that the ditch-and-mound barrier known as the Vallum (just to the south of, and contemporary with, Hadrian's Wall) was the rampart constructed by Severus.

Grímr and Grim are bynames for Odin or Wodan, who might be credited with the wish to build earthworks in unreasonably short periods of time.

This name is the same one found as Grim's Ditch several times in England in connection with early ramparts: for example, near Wallingford, Oxfordshire or between Berkhamsted (Herts) and Bradenham (Bucks).

[32] Hector Boece in his 1527 History of Scotland called it the "wall of Abercorn", repeating the story that it had been destroyed by Graham.

[33] Renaissance patrons in the 16th century, including George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal, who were exposed to the world of international scholarship through diplomacy, began to collect antiquities.

[36] The UK government's nomination of the Antonine Wall for World Heritage status to the international conservation body UNESCO was first officially announced in 2003.

[41] The Antonine Wall was listed as an extension to the World Heritage Site "Frontiers of the Roman Empire" on 7 July 2008.

[49] The first capable effort to systematically map the Antonine Wall was undertaken in 1764 by William Roy,[50] the forerunner of the Ordnance Survey.

In the 19th century, the Ordnance Survey showed the visible traces of the wall in some detail on its first and second edition maps at 25-inch and 6-inch scales,[51][52] but no attempt was made at that date to undertake archaeological work.