Castlecary

Castlecary is a Roman road junction where the Bonny Water valley narrows between drumlins and a sandstone ridge, forcing traffic past a second-century fort on the Antonine Wall. The Romans built a six-acre camp there to police the crossing and resist northern armies, while a native fort at Bankier and the later Court Hill motte show that people kept returning to this chokepoint because the land itself made defence easy. Even the name may preserve that older fort rather than the medieval castle, suggesting Castlecary has been a place of control, memory and stubborn human ambition long before its stone tower appeared.