Roman military barracks discovered in Rome and Exeter

The discovery of the remains of a huge Roman barracks in Rome was in the news this week (from the 16th May). The remains were discovered during excavations for a new line and station on the Rome metro, near the Colosseum: see ‘Italy unearths huge Roman barracks during Rome metro dig’ at www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36311156 , posted on Tuesday (17th May). This must be Roman military barracks month, as – on the 13th May – MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) had announced the publication of their report on the Roman fort which they investigated at Plantation Place in Fenchurch Street in London in 1997-2003: see www.mola.org.uk/blog/roman-fort-built-response-boudica%E2%80%99s-revolt-discovered . At the end of April (27th April), the discovery of a huge Roman military complex, including barracks, at Exeter and Devon Crematorium in Exeter in Devon also made the news: see www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Incredible-Roman-army-base-Exeter/story.html . This summer’s season of the annual excavations on the site of Vindolanda Roman fort are, of course, currently underway and the team regularly Tweet photo.s of their finds.

The remarkable remains of the Roman barracks in Rome cover 9,000 square metres and include 39 rooms, a 100-metre long hall, and a burial ground. The barracks have been dated to the 2nd century and are thought to have housed the emperor Hadrian’s Praetorian Guard, at the heart of the Roman empire. The remains are to be incorporated into the new metro station which is planned to be the city’s first ‘archaeological station’. The military site in Exeter includes two barrack-blocks and its discovery has been described by an archaeologist on site as ‘very exciting’: the site has been dated to the second half of the 1st century AD. It is thought to have been part of an important complex of Roman military sites in the south-west during the Roman conquest of Britain. The London fort was later, having been built after the Boudican revolt of AD 61, when native Britons rebelled against the Roman occupation and burned the Roman towns of St Albans, London and Colchester to the ground. London also has an even later fort (at modern Cripplegate), dated to AD 120, but no evidence of a fortress or fort pre-dating the AD 61 fort has yet been found there.

The site of the Roman legionary fortress at Colchester, including the remains of barrack-blocks, was identified by the Trust in 1973, within the western part of the walled town centre. The fortress at Colchester was built in AD 44 and it was probably the first Roman fortress built in Britain. The fortress was decommissioned in about AD 49, when the Roman army moved north and west to extend its colonisation of Britain. The fortress was converted for use in the Roman civilian town which was founded here in about AD 49. The Trust uncovered a great deal of evidence of the fortress during our major excavations in the town centre in the 1970s and 1980s, ie its defensive ditch and rampart (constructed on top of a timber ‘corduroy’), internal streets, two buildings which may have been tribunes’ quarters, and evidence of thirteen barrack-blocks, on our sites at the Gilberd School (now the Sixth Form College), at Lion Walk, and at Culver Street (now Culver Square). Each barrack-block would have housed a ‘century’ (centuria) and included centurions’ (officers’) quarters. The fortress here was large: it was 50 acres in area and we think it would have contained 50 barrack-blocks. It was the base for a Roman legion (legio) which, at that time, would have consisted of 10 cohorts sub-divided into 50 centuria (about 5,000 men). No two Roman fortresses were the same, but they were built to similar plans. However, this one included a large annexe, on its eastern side, which is an unusual element. Coins to pay the soldiers may have been produced by a mint nearby at Sheepen.

The Trust uncovered further evidence of the Roman fortress during our excavations at the Williams & Griffin store in the High Street at Colchester in 2014-15: this was of a street which originated as the main north-south street of the Roman fortress, and which had been repeatedly resurfaced during its centuries of use in the Roman civilian town. There was also a sequence of unusual opus signinum floors which, perhaps, represented a building in the fortress. What connects the Roman barracks in Rome, London, Exeter and Colchester – and in many other places – is, of course, the Roman army, which built and maintained the huge Roman empire by military force…

Read more about the Colchester Roman fortress in Colchester Archaeological Report 3: excavations at Lion Walk, Balkerne Lane, and Middleborough, Colchester, Essex. Visit the web-site of the Vindolanda Trust and the Roman Army Museum at www.vindolanda.com/ and follow the excavations on Twitter at https://twitter.com/VindolandaTrust .

You can see a large fragment of wall from a barrack-block in the Colchester Roman fortress on display here at the Roman circus centre, which the Trust excavated in 1982 at our Gilberd School site (now the Sixth Form College). Read more about the wall on this web-site at www.thecolchesterarchaeologist.co.uk/?p=18585 .

The images show a reconstruction and our plan of the Roman fortress at Colchester, both of which were based on the archaeological evidence. (The reconstruction was painted by Peter Froste and shows the fortress in AD 48, as viewed from the south-west; it is published in City of Victory. The plan is published in CAR 3.)

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