ABSTRACT
When Caratacus, leader of Celtic resistance to the invading Roman forces in southern Britain, was defeated somewhere in Wales in 51 AD, he was captured and sent to Rome. As he was led down the streets of the then greatest city in the world he marvelled at the grand buildings of stone and brick, so many of them faced in marble. Brought before the Emperor Claudius, who had himself visited Britain eight years earlier, Caratacus said to him: ‘With so many marvellous buildings here in Rome, what could you have wanted with our poor huts in Britain?’ Theemper or’s reply is not recorded, but he will have had to agree that there was all the difference in the world between the palace of Augustus and a Celtic chief’s thatched round hut. Most Celtic houses in Britain were simply constructed. They were generally round as in the remains of the house at Little Woodbury in Wiltshire, the wheelhouse at Jarlshof in Shetland, or the house on an unenclosed platform at Greenknowe in Berwickshire. The Greenknowe house is one of the earliest timber houses found in Scotland. It was built on a platform of earth dug out of the hillside. Its wall was made of a double line of wattle fencing laced with twigs caked with clay. In between was a level of stone and rubble, on top of which was packed grass and other vegetation. There was another of this type found at Glenshee in Perthshire.
