The Ancients - Edges of Empire: Chesters Roman Fort

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

Described as one of the most complete cavalry forts that survives in Britain, Chesters Roman Fort is also home to the best preserved military baths on the island. In this episode, English Heritage Curator Dr Frances McIntosh takes Tristan around the site, and explains how it can tell us more about everyday life on this far flung frontier.

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they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, now you might remember a few months back, we had Dr. Frances McIntosh on the show. Frances is the curator along Hadrian's Wall for English Heritage, and she showed me around the remains of Rome's northernmost town, Roman

Corbridge. And today's podcast, we're going in a similar vein because whilst I was up there at Hadrian's Wall, I was also fortunate enough to be shown around another remarkable Roman site by Francis. And this site is the best preserved cavalry fort from Roman Britain, Chester's Roman Fort, situated on Hadrian's Wall itself. Now, Chester's, it's not just renowned for how well preserved the cavalry fort itself is, but it's also famous for having the best preserved military bathhouse from Roman Britain. It's an extraordinary sight, as you're about to find out. So without further ado, here's Francis. So, Francis, we've headed north. Whereabouts are we now?

So we're at Chesters or Cylearnum or Cylearnum if you want to choose a Latin name. We're on the fort on the Wall a few miles east of the location of Corbridge. And as we're approaching Chesters now, we're approaching from beyond the Wall? Yep, we're north of the Wall or in Bar barbaricum maybe as the Romans might have called it and we're entering the fort through the impressive north gateway. Although only the foundations remain today, this north gateway would have been a monumental structure designed to emphasise power and strength to anyone passing through this frontier fort. So to get in here you would have had to pass through the soldiers guarding the wall.

So you can see a guard chamber on either side, this would have been a double arched gateway and you would have maybe had to know the password if you were Roman, if you were a non-Roman, you know, a Briton, you know, what's your business in the fort? Would you have been allowed in? Yeah, I don't know. We're crossing over the thresholds, we're now safe, thank goodness, in the Empire empire so we are now in the empire itself and these huge gateways I'm guessing and looking at the foundation yeah are they quite recognizable throughout the fort where these gateways would have been yep so there's at Chester's we've got four main gateways and two small gateways most

forts just have four one on each side but yeah they're standard layout standard location you'd know where to expect them it's on a good pattern. Fantastic round I'm dying to see what's inside the fort. Yeah, let's go and have a look. From the gateway we made a beeline for the centre of the fort. The heart of a Roman fort is its headquarters or Principia. And you can see here it's quite nice being a bit above, we can see the full layout of it.

So we'd walk in, go into the entrance and there's these rooms off this side and then this open courtyard in the middle and there's quite a famous carving in the middle of the courtyard that i'm dying to see absolutely absolutely this is a massive space isn't it absolutely huge yeah it's the heart of the fort so this is the center of the fort it's where all the administration would take place you know people would come for their orders and it's where the strong room is as we saw at Corbrid. And we are walking along the side. So we're in the middle of the Prinkipied in a courtyard. These bits would be rooms here and you can see again you'll start to see the same features,

pillars to hold a covered walkway and this is the drain where the water would drip off the roof for these offices here. It's incredible to visualize how these walkways would have looked some 2,000 years ago complete with pillars and a roof within the Principia itself and it was then that we came across the famous carving. We're talking about something which isn't a similar feature from what we've seen earlier. I'm not going to say what is that because I think I know what that is. We are staring at a penis. Yes or a phallus, a phallic carving as we say in Roman studies. The phallus was a really important symbol to the Roman army, a symbol of strength and good luck, not just the kind of classic fertility. So you'll see it on lots of belt fittings

and all sorts of decorative pieces from belts and other things that the soldiers wore but also you'll find it carved on stones. We've got one here in the headquarters. So it's a symbol of fertility and a symbol of good luck. Yeah, and strength as well. So yeah, it wasn't just, you know, we see it just as about fertility and a bit of a joke, but it wasn't that at all in the Roman period. There's quite a few actually on Hadrian's Wall as well,

so it's always good to keep your eyes peeled when you're walking along. Francis and I continued further into the interior of the Principia, and what was a very sacred, heavily guarded part of the fort. So this is the back area of the Principia, the heart of the fort? That's right. So you're coming through that door. There'll be one set of guards there.

There'll be another set of guards here because you're going further and further into the inner sanctum. So we think that was a podium, perhaps where orders might be given. And in here, in Chester's, we have the shrine where the standards were kept the Ides which we didn't the floor had gone hadn't it at Corbridge but you see here this is our strong room which was underneath this Ides the shrines the standards and you get a much clearer sense can you hear so this is really sacred space here and off to the side down here yeah we've what looks like thankfully so much easier step down and you have the strong with the strong wind with the roof so you can see the size

it's much bigger it's almost double the size of the core bridge one and you mentioned this is the heart of the fort if you look that way if the ground was as it was in the Roman period you could see the North Gate so when you entered the North Gate the street would lead up here so the eyes is right in the Roman period, you could see the north gate. So when you entered the north gate, the street would lead up here, so the eye is right in the centre and could potentially be visible all the way from there. So it's really, really important because it's symbolically important, but it's also in the middle, so it's most protected. So someone actually possibly walking through that gate, coming down from the south,

could walk through that gate, and as soon as they walked through, they could see possibly the glimmer of the standard in the far distance yeah if the doors were open so and you know this is where it always would be in a fort so you've come into the fort and the south gate's that way the north that way it's right in the middle having the strong room and the standards this was an incredibly important part of the fort and just before we headed down into the strong room itself Something which really strikes you is how well preserved the whole subterranean structure is, especially when you look at the design of the roof. Well, one other thing I just noticed there I do love is the vaulting.

Yes, it's original. Original vaulting. Absolutely. And this was covering the safe room. Yeah, the strong room. And when this was discovered in 1801, the wooden door was still intact. Really? Yeah. Any idea what happened to that wood now?

It disintegrated very quickly once it was exposed to the air, unfortunately. But we do know quite a funny story. When they discovered it, the workmen were extremely disappointed that there wasn't treasure in there. Oh, shame. Because, you know, they were told about this treasure room in the middle of a fort. There was a few coins, but not many. Next, we headed down into the strong room itself.

Do take care. It's a little bit damp we've got problems with drainage on this site which the Victorian excavators also struggled with. Oh you are right it is a bit damp isn't it? So you said the Victorians they struggled with this as well? Yeah so we've got accounts of them struggling and they were putting in drainage to make it easier to access the site and that's how they discovered the bath house which we'll go and see later so it's quite a nice coincidence really otherwise you might never found it well i mean it kind of gives a sense doesn't it when you're in here how very close in it is you know people coming down once again as we saw at corbridge coming down from the main heart of the pricapier down here to get the money perhaps the most secluded space bringing it up and then

dispersing it to the troops or whoever. Yeah and if you think they've come into Principia, you walk through how many gates? That's probably one, two, three, maybe three or four passwords and sets of guards you've got to get past so yeah. Mission impossible Roman style isn't it? From the Principia we headed down towards the river and towards one of the standout structures at Chester's. So Frances we're now south of the wall and towards one of the standout structures at Chester's. So Frances, we're now south of the wall and the fort.

That's it. We're out of the fort. We're safe in the empire because we're below the wall. We're down by the river and coming up to the bathhouse, one of the best parts, I think, of sight. And it looks remarkably well preserved. How did they uncover it? So when we were up in the headquarters, we were talking about the drainage. The Victorians were putting drains in. and you can see the land slopes away, and the land would have continued down to the riverbank, and they put drains in and started to find the walls. So that was completely covered until the excavations in the 1870s and 1880s.

So 150 years earlier, we can just picture this as just being this slightly sloping mound. Yeah. And we would have had no idea this was there until they started digging here. Yeah, so they put a drain in, found a wall and uncovered the best preserved bathhouse in Roman Britain, well military bathhouse, sure Bath would have something to say about. Well I'm dying to have a look, you've built it up. Let's go in and we'll go in the entrance that the bathers would have gone in. Fantastic. The entrance leads us into the remains of a stunning structure. What was once a

large covered room it is complete with some interesting cubicle like niches embedded into the north wall. So this is the entrance to the changing room and then you can see here are really famous niches. Every group who's ever visited Chester's has to have a photo I think in there and it's really interesting in this site because you can see so this where my feet are was the floor level when the bathhouse was first built, presumably around the time of the fort being built in the 120s. This where your foot is, is a bench. There would have been a wooden bench on the top here. You can see the lovely sculpted bench foot and by the fourth century, this was the floor level. So again that change in floor level but also change in use because by the fourth century this bathhouse was out of use

because it was too big for the garrison that was in the fort. So they repurposed it and we think, well we know some evidence of butchery was happening here so we don't think it was a bathhouse but we're not quite sure what was happening in here. So really interesting just in those little clues what you can see the change. Absolutely, this is once again like at Corbridge. We see over the centuries the progression of how high or how low the floor level was and it's the same here in this bath. Yeah so this would have been the first room you said this is the changing room yeah the changing room there's a lot of debate about what these niches were for were they to put your clothes in were they for statues because we often know there's

religion and religious worship linked with bathing but you know we don't know, but they do make a really good place for a photo. Catastrophic warfare, bloody revolutions and violent ideological battles. I'm James Rogers and over on the Warfare podcast, we're exploring the vast history of ferocious global conflict. We've got the classics. Understandably when we see it from hindsight the great revelation in Potsdam was really Stalin saying yeah tell me something I don't know. The unexpected. And it was at that moment that he just handed her all these documents that he discovered sewn into the cushion of the armchair. And the never ending. So arguably every state that has tested nuclear weapons has created some sort of effect to local communities. Subscribe to Warfare from History

Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Join us on the front line of military history. From the changing rooms and these famous niches, a Roman soldier would then progress through various rooms of this military bathhouse. So if we come through here and then you've got a choice, do you go hot or cold first and dry or wet? So we can completely change. So what do you fancy? Should we go? Let's say cold first. So we're going to go this way and we're going towards the river and this was our cold bath. It's not quite a plunge pool, it's a bit bigger than a plunge pool but you'd go in here and again this is quite confusing so if you have a look we're below the floor again you can see here this is a drain so this would have been covered up this would be the

floor level we've lost that so there's loads of things going on under the floor but yeah so cold room there then you could walk through into there to warm up and you can go from cold to warm to hot. So is that the natural progression that you would go and then change although it seems that you've got this choice between going hot or cold? You would probably go hot first, sweat out some of the dirt, go to cold to purify you can go back and forth so it's very much like a spa nowadays although there wouldn't have been soaps and things but you'd have oils and strigils to scrape off the dirty sweat. And so what's a strigil? So it's a curved metal item that you'd use to scrape off the oil and the sweat and all the dirt that you've picked up you know training as a Roman soldier. Fantastic so

let's see I've just had my cold bath where would I go next? Let's go hot. So we go back retrace our steps and you can see here where the doors would be in through the doorway and in here we're in a dry hot room and the heat is coming through from this room now you can't see very well cuz we're gonna stand on it but underneath us is a hyper course now what was a hyper course so that was under floor heating basically so there's pillars underneath all of these flags. So at the moment we're stood on modern flags but on that other side there's some original flags. And down on that side there's a stoke hole. There would have been a covering over there,

some porcelain probably would have had to stoke the fire and there would have been heat under the floor but also amazingly up the walls. So you can see the floor tiles don't go to the edge of the wall and these things here which we survive leave an air gap so the hot air comes under your feet but also the wall so the wall and the floor would be hot so as you're remembering as you're saying there so perhaps a poor slave would be pumping this hot air underneath it would be coming under here it would be sifting through the gaps or through the sides to make this a very very hot room. Yeah so sauna because hot dry so we did have steam rooms but this one's more like a sauna

and then next door the heat would continue to flow through underneath so this won't be as hot because obviously we're a bit further away from the fire but still pretty warm so you know a less super hot sauna. Next came the steam room long and narrow in its design at the far end of the bathhouse. This is even more difficult almost to describe because all of the floor is gone so all the hypercourse that we were mentioning earlier is gone so we would have to float because this is the floor level in the Roman period. Some steps have been created using some ceiling arches pieces and we're now inside what was the hypercourse. It's up to my waist. If you imagine we'd be walking along here and the steam is created from water in here. So there would be a kind of a fountain and then also

a hot bath there so the steam would be coming off both. So you've got hot, dry, hot, warm and then down to the cold. So I'm just imagining a Roman soldier. He's come down from the fort. He's gone through the changing room. He's either gone down to the cold or up to the hot, gone through the doors. Of course, he said higher level back then and said now walking into the steam room. And once again, you have this this connected chamber which is basically pumping and doing all the work to create

this so the furnace is on that side and there's pools there but here there'll be water again with more heat to yeah um really steamy atmosphere yeah and it would have been hot on the floor so you'd have had to wear we think wooden clogs to protect your feet because you're piping heat straight up onto stone that's gonna make it really difficult to walk on. And what other archaeology have we discovered from this very well preserved military bath? So we've understood the potential flow and the changes so you see here this is another doorway so the door jams would have been here and the door would have been in the middle so we could go through that way there's a doorway there that's been closed up so this was the original doorway it's been closed up so you see a byddai'r drws wedi bod yn y cyfnod. Felly, gallem ni fynd drwy'r ffordd honno. Mae drws yno sydd wedi cael ei clodi. Felly, dyma'r drws oedd yn yr unol. Mae wedi cael ei clodi. Felly, rydych chi'n gweld, mae hyn wedi cael ei ddefnyddio am

amser hir. Byddai'n newid y ffordd y gwnaethant ei ddefnyddio. Mae'n ddiddorol eu bod wedi dod o hyd i oedder gwych yma i Ffortuna, sy'n ddyniaeth o edrych a throi. Felly, rydym yn gwybod nad oeddet ti'n dod i'r tŷ ysgol i gael yn glin. Doeddet ti'n dod i gyd-ddyfynnu, i sgwysu a'r debyg i throi a throi. Felly, didn't just come to the bathhouse to get clean, you came to socialise, to gossip and probably to gamble and to relax. So it's really interesting to think about this place that the soldiers could come to. It could have been possibly a dangerous place? Well, baths, maybe someone's going to swindle you out of some money if you lose in your game or, you know, down at Bath, the cursed tablets there, people talking about their

cloaks being stolen whilst at the bathhouse you know all those niches changing rooms is it secure we just don't know so mr gaius might be a bit vulnerable if he went down to the bath he made some enemies up at the force yeah so could any soldiers come down and go to the roman bath absolutely bathing was an essential part of roman life it was kind of you know you need to feed the soldiers you need to give them wine and you needed to let them come to the bathhouse it's a really key part of being a Roman, keeping clean, but also the act of coming down, like we talked about socialising, you know, it was a really essential part of Roman life. Yeah, the soldiers would not have been happy if they couldn't have a

bath. The bathhouse at Chester's has been remarkably well preserved. Indeed, as Francis said, it is the best preserved Roman military bathhouse in Britain. But it is important to remember that Chester's was first and foremost a military installation. Right, well we've come into the barracks now. We can only see some barracks, but the fort would have been absolutely full with them. And at Chester's, the barracks here are for a cavalry unit. For cavalry? Yes. So if you look at this room for example this would be divided into two at the front, three horses at the back, three men. So they shared a room together? Yeah so for a long time archaeologists were looking for

stables when they knew a cavalry unit was based here and they were very confused because they're finding barracks but no stables but we now know that three horses in front three men in the back i mean that must have been just thinking of the hygiene and the sanitation that must have been very very smelly having three men in the back room with the three horses right in front so walls end excavations there in their cavalry barracks found urine pits in the front but yeah and we think probably the barracks are two stories so maybe there's a hail off at the top but you know you'd want your horses near you they're a valuable asset and also i suppose it means they're safe within the fort but yeah i don't know if i would have enjoyed sharing a room with these horses and you know it's quite tight quite tight indeed indeed and is this

barrack sharing with the horses and the men at the back. Is this repeated along the length? Yeah, so this isn't a full run of barracks. There would have been 32 men in a terma, which is a cavalry unit, as opposed to a sentry, which is an infantry unit. So we've not got all of the rooms here, but you can see one, two, three, four, five barracks here, and there's some more under the field, and at the end is the decurion's quarters. So the decurion is in charge of the terma, whereas a centurion is in charge of a senta, whereas a Centurion is in charge of a century in an infantry unit. But you'll see the vast difference in the accommodation of the Decurion compared to the ordinary cavalry soldier. Absolutely, let's go and see. And as we're walking up there now we see once again we have this line in the middle. Nice drain here and that's another

barrack. So you can see how tightly packed they were, it's just been row and on the other side there's another line of barracks so really packed in because you've got to fit 500 men and 500 horses into this fort so quite tight so just remind yourself this one room that's for the three men and the three horses together this is the Curians quarters you come in to that wall to that back wall there so possibly he shared this with his junior officer and they possibly had two horses each but even so quite a big step up compared to what we've just seen this is absolutely massive yes yeah it's quite luxurious isn't it absolutely i mean do we have any idea like with those barracks do we know would the

horses have been in one small part and the rest were men? I'm not sure if we know that sort of level of detail for the Decurians' quarters to know exactly where the horses would be. But it's likely it would have been in the front part. Maybe they didn't have to quite share so closely. But it's remarkable. You see the similarities with some barrack blocks for the infantry, how you have these very small apartments. Yeah. Eight men with the cooking quarters and all that.

And then at the end, you have this much bigger room for the centurion. Exactly. And it's a very similar layout here. It's this idea of status. Yeah, hierarchy in the army is very important, but it's a big step up from being just a cavalry soldier to being a decurion. And then think of this compared to the commanding officer's house, how vast that is. That's, you know, three, four, five times the size of this. Chester's gives us incredible insight into the layout

of a Roman cavalry fort on the frontier, this edge of empire. But I'm intrigued, just before we finish, to know a bit more about the troopers themselves. So, Francis, what do we know about the cavalry stationed at Chester's? So the unit here was the second ally of Asturias. So they're from Asturias in northern Spain. So just one of those units coming from all over the empire to serve up on the wall. Absolutely.

Just confirms the fact that we've seen across Hadrian's Wall have all these auxiliary units coming from far corners of the empire. Yeah. Coming to this northwestern fringe to serve on this far flung frontier. Yeah. Yeah. It would be, you know, a real hodgepotch, different languages, different cultures all mixing. And we've been around this fort. It's a really impressive fort.

We've seen the Pringham here, the heart of it. We've gone outside to see the baths, the bridge, the barracks here for the cavalry. But begs the question, what happens to Chester's? Well, it's like all the forts on Hadrian's Wall. Over the years, particularly in the 4th century, the numbers of troops based here reduces. And then, officially, the end of Roman Britain in 410. Obviously we

know it's not that simple but we don't know so much about the occupation here in the 4th and the 5th century. You'd have to go to Baird Oswald to find out that a bit more. Well looks like that's my next stop. Yeah. I hope you enjoyed this ancients podcast on Chester's Roman Fort, the best preserved cavalry fort from Roman Britain. It's an incredible site. You must go and visit when you do get the chance. Now, if you want to watch the full documentary that we did with Francis at Chester's, but also at Corbridge and at Halstead's and at many other sites situated along Hadrian's Wall, then go to HistoryHitTV, access.historyhit.com and look for the ancient series Edges of Empire, Hadrian's Wall. Thank you.