Mosshouses

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Dere Street at Mosshouses Crossroads.

The year 1959 was tremendously dry and the whole Borders turned beige. I was working on a three-mile fencing contract in the Cheviots mostly along the line of Dere Street so I had the opportunity to study its construction in ideal conditions. Later that year, while working on the Mosshouses Moor I concluded that the medieval ‘Kingis Grate Rode’ there, was of Roman construction ie Dere Street. However, the Inventory of Roxburghshire insisted that Dere Street must have ran along the bottom of the valley even although ‘between the Tweed and the county boundary no trace of the road survives’.

More imagination than observation there then.

My version is given below.