Notes on the Reconstruction of the Roman Signal Tower at Scarborough
On Castle Hill at Scarborough lie the remains of a Roman signal station dating to the late fourth century. It formed part of a chain of coastal towers providing early warning against seaborne raiders along the east coast of Britain.
As part of bringing this structure onto our set, we were forced to reconsider, carefully and from first principles, what such a tower may actually have looked like. A number of artistic reconstructions exist. Some favour tall, fully stone-built towers, comparable to those found in more southerly Roman ports; others propose semi-enclosed or heavily clad structures intended to protect against weather. While these reconstructions are thoughtful, they are necessarily speculative.
Archaeologically, we are on firm ground only in a few areas: the stone base survives, its footprint is known, and post bases indicate the presence of large timber uprights. Beyond this, there is no ancient description or visual record that tells us how the tower was finished above its foundations.
To the south of South Sands, a sixteenth-century plat commissioned under Henry VIII depicts two near-shore structures: one possibly the remnant of an earlier coastal round tower (a contested identification), and another interpreted as a signalling station (again, inferred rather than proven). While interesting, these structures offer little direct guidance for reconstructing the Castle Hill tower itself.
Placing the tower in its real landscape revealed several important observations.
First, the tower does not need to be especially tall. At this location, a height of around 20 metres is sufficient. Although it has been argued that the stone base could have supported a structure exceeding 30 metres, increasing the height beyond this point produces only marginal gains in visibility (but dramatically increases its vulnerability to wind). Regardless of height, the tower cannot see South Sands or the site of the later town of Scarborough. Even at a modest elevation, however, it has excellent lines of sight north and south along the coast to other signal stations, and clear visibility of earlier near-shore infrastructure closer to South Sands, which in turn could observe areas occluded from Castle Hill. This strongly suggests that the tower functioned as part of a coordinated early-warning system, working in conjunction with other installations, rather than as a single dominant “hard point”.
Second, the tower commands exceptional views inland. From its position one can clearly see the western hills, valleys, and boglands, as well as the Roman road descending the embankments once known as the Raceway. This was a marginal landscape: poorly drained, difficult to farm, and awaiting the later transformations brought by Viking and medieval agriculture.
The tower required substantial fuel to operate its beacon, though it was not intended to function continuously or in severe weather in the manner of a modern lighthouse. Those stationed there required sufficient protection to hold the site, secure supplies, and reassure nearby inhabitants during periods of local unrest. The tower therefore needed water, dry storage for fuel, and provisions adequate for bad weather and short-term isolation.
In considering the superstructure, personal experience proved unexpectedly relevant. In my youth, I lived on a desert-edge farm where tall metal towers supported small windmills used to pump water from deep underground. Those structures were extremely vulnerable to wind when enclosed, and far more stable when left open. This experience highlighted the mechanical advantage of exposed frameworks in high-wind environments. A seven-post timber tower provides far greater resistance to wind shear and torsion than a simple four-post structure, which is particularly prone to twisting.
Our final reconstruction therefore adopts the following assumptions. A walled enclosure, based on small Roman fortlets, surrounds a single-storey stone building with walls approximately 2.5 metres high and a tiled roof rising to about 3.5 metres. This structure provides shelter and secure storage for fuel and supplies. From within it rises a timber tower formed of seven major beams: one central upright and six external uprights leaning inward by approximately five degrees. These are bound by ring beams at each level. We propose a watch deck immediately below the beacon, offering some shelter from wind and rain and relief from the glare of the fire, with dry fuel close at hand. The beacon itself may have consisted of an open fire backed on three sides by plastered or rendered screens to increase reflectivity; for practical and visual clarity we have represented this as a simple three-dish ceramic arrangement.
The resulting structure differs markedly from our initial expectations and from earlier artistic reconstructions, which remain valuable propositions in their own right. What emerges instead is a tower that feels provisional, exposed, and distinctly utilitarian. It is not the refined stone architecture of southern Roman installations. This was, even in Roman times, a hard landscape—one watched rather than settled.
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