THE campaign to have a historic Scottish landmark recognised on equal terms with the Great Wall of China and the pyramids of Egypt entered a new phase yesterday.

Historic Scotland, which looks after four miles of the 37-mile Antonine Wall, is in the process of securing European funding to make the structure Scotland's fifth World Heritage Site. The 2000-year-old wall, which runs from Bo'ness in West Lothian to Old Kilpatrick in West Dunbartonshire, is one of the most significant Roman remains still in existence in the UK.

Patricia Ferguson, culture minister, backed the plans yesterday and unveiled a new booklet on all the Roman frontiers throughout Europe.
Edinburgh's Old and New towns, the St Kilda archipelago, New Lanark, and Orkney's "Neolithic Heart" are already among the 600 sites which are recognised by the United Nations. Plans to add the Antonine wall to that list were first unveiled by ministers in 2003.

The Scottish bid is part of a joint international effort to have the frontiers of the Roman Empire recognised, with similar projects under way in Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary.

The total cost of the joint bid would come to £900,000, with the countries hoping European funding would eventually cover about 60% of that sum.

The Antonine Wall is an extraordinary phenomenon. At a time when the North Britons lived in small crude wooden huts, along this frontier cavalrymen from Greece and archers from Syria ate from Samian bowls, played board games and compiled meticulous records to be sent back to Rome. It is time we recognised this heritage. As Leonard Cottrell once observed: "Stretches of the Antonine Wall remain, and though they lack the lonely magnificence of Hadrian's monument, they have a different type of appeal."