of the fortified frontier known as the Antonine Wall (named after the Emperor, as with Hadrian's Wall) that the Romans had established across Scotland. Nearly five hundred men worked on the site, building a fort that covered nearly six acres, with a harbour for communication. However, the fort was only inhabited for a short time, perhaps fifteen years, before it was abandoned by the troops who were ordered to retreat south to Hadrian's Wall. Pottery and coins of later date indicate that the fort and harbour were reinhabited and used as a base for the army and navy of the Emperor Septimius Severus, sometime between 208 and 211. The medieval parish church of Cramond parish (which retains its late medieval western tower in altered form), was built within the Roman fort. Though knowledge of the Roman presence at Cramond was recorded afterwards, the remains of the fort itself were only rediscovered in 1954. Substantial archaeological research was carried out upon its discovery to build up a reasonably accurate picture of the site in Roman times. The fort was rectangular in shape, with walls fifteen feet high on all sides. A gatehouse was set in every wall, allowing access in all four directions. Inside, there were barracks, workshops, granaries, headquarters and the commander's house. Later excavations revealed other constructions outside the boundary of the fort, including a bath-house, further industrial workshops and a native settlement. In 1997, the Cramond Lioness was uncovered in the harbour mud by a local boatman (who received a substantial monetary reward for finding this major antiquity), and was identified as a sandstone statue of a lioness devouring a hapless male figure, probably one of a pair at the tomb of a military commander. After conservation, the statue was put on display in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. It is one of the most ambitious pieces of Roman sculpture to have survived in Scotland. Medieval period After the departure of the Romans, little is known about the state of Cramond for several centuries. The historiography of the period has been summed up by the historian J. Wood, who wrote 'a dark cloud of obscurity again settled over the parish of Cramond, of which I cannot find the smallest memorial in any historian till the year 995.' A tower house, Cramond Tower, probably built in the early 15th century, and part of a now-demolished larger establishment,