Monday 11 January 2010

Filey Roman signal station



Whilst in Filey on the Yorkshire coast over a snowy New Years Eve 2009 I grabbed a couple of pictures of the stones excavated from the Roman signal station at Filey.


The station, built during the late fourth century AD, is an unusual, late structure from Roman Britain and was positioned on "the Brigg", a promentary being eroded by the sea and following the (last, during the 1990's?) excavation of the site five foundation stones were relocated to some ornamental gardens in the town.


As noted on the interpretation board the central stone has a carving of a dog chasing a stag running left.

This can be hard to see, even when it's right in front of you, so I've just painted around the outline in the following photograph.

There were other similar stations forming a chain on the Yorkshire coast and I've also visited the remains of the ones at Scarborough and Goldsborough. The one at Ravenscar unfortunately disappeared under the construction of Raven Hall and the one at Huntcliff sadly fell into the sea after being re-excavated during the 1960's.

Below is an artist's impression of what they might have looked like, although the (post?) holes in the foundation stones suggest that there might have been a significant amount of timber in their construction.