Plate No. 039 · tartan

Falkirk Tartan

The Falkirk tartan is the earliest tartan-like cloth found in Britain: a scrap of woolen check from the third century AD, discovered near the Antonine Wall stuffed into the mouth of an earthenware pot that held nearly two thousand Roman coins. Its check is the simplest possible, two tones of undyed wool, the light from ordinary fleece and the dark from the wool of darker sheep. The fragment is held by the National Museum of Scotland, and its pattern is the same border check that Border shepherds were still weaving fifteen centuries later.