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Howburn Digger wrote: It is a good way of raising cash for continued work on the monument. In a similar fashion the massive nail hoard from Inchtuthil was sold to help finance further excavations back in the 1960's and they continue to be sold off today. My "Roman Nails From Inchtuthil" collection holds a pride of place on top of a bookcase in my living room. It was 1960 and Ian Richmond had just unearthed 900,000 nails weighing an astonishing 10 tons under the floor of a workshop at the Roman Legionary Fortress a few miles South of Dunkeld in Perthshire. The Scottish Museum of Antiquities simply didn't know what to do with them. Every museum in the world was sent a set of nails. The remaining (over 9 and a half tons) were sorted. graded and sold by Colville's Iron and Steelworks in Motherwell. They sold sets of nails (you could buy 5 varying lengths of Roman Nails in a wooden box for £1.25 or a single big nail for a half crown) and smelted much of the rest as raw Iron. Some were melted down and made into sinks, car parts and tools. The last big batch of a hundred thousand or so were sold off by the Dept of Culture Media and Sport in the early 1990's to an American dealer who continues to sell them on eBay as "Crucifiction Nails from the time of Christ".
Hi HD, when I was down at Birnam CD collecting stuff for the band's new album I was told a story about the Roman Forts at Inchtuthil by my friend Martin Hadden, owner of BirnamCD and formerly of Silly Wizard.
A man in the village, with a keen interest in prehistory and Roman history, said a Roman fort situated north of the river was actually situated south of the river. Most of the locals thought this guy, tho clever, was often slightly unhinged. However one year the Tay burst its banks, changed direction which placed the fort south of the river, re-joining the others.
No doubt, I'll be back in the area reasonably soon, so I'll have a look for myself.
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