the Friends’ excursion to St Albans and Roman Verulamium

On Saturday (9th May), members of the Friends of the Colchester Archaeological Trust (‘the Friends’ or ‘FCAT’) went on an excursion to St Albans, led by Mike Corbishley. Mike is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of London’s Institute of Archaeology and he has a long association with the Trust.

The group set off at 8.30am by coach from Colchester town centre and didn’t get back to Colchester until after 6.00pm. The modern town of St Albans was preceded by the famous Roman town of Verulamium. The FCAT members visited the remains of the Roman theatre and, also, the remains of Roman houses in Verulamium Park, ie a mosaic and part of a hypocaust. They were able to view further Roman remains and artefacts in Verulamium Museum, including the collection of fine mosaics. The FCAT members enjoyed some free time in the town centre, and some used the time to visit the cathedral.

St Albans and Colchester are both important Roman sites, each including an important Roman town and large oppidum, and there are several significant connections between Verulamium and Roman Colchester and the pre-Roman settlement of Camulodunum which preceded Colchester. There is only one parallel in Britain for the remarkable Iron Age funerary enclosures which the Trust excavated at the Stanway site in the 1990s, and that is the large funerary enclosure uncovered at St Albans. In AD 61, during the Boudiccan revolt, the native Britons burned the Roman towns of Colchester, St Albans and London to the ground and massacred their inhabitants. The Roman theatre at St Albans and the Roman circus at Colchester are two of the small group of remarkable, large-scale entertainment venues known in Roman Britain, a group which includes theatres, amphitheatres and the Roman circus. The Roman theatre at St Albans formed part of a complex with two temples. Colchester has a Romano-Celtic temple-theatre complex at Gosbecks, but the Roman theatre at St Albans is the only example in Britain with significant above-ground remains.

With thanks to Trust volunteer and FCAT member Shirley Hillyard for the great photo.s.

The images show the remains of the Roman theatre; Roman mosaics in Verulamium Museum; and St Albans Cathedral.

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