Hadrian's Wall: The Final Frontier Of The Ancient Roman Empire | Full History Hit Series

It is the best-known border of the Roman Empire. Hadrian's W has fascinated antiquarians, historians and visitors for centuries and I have learned more about it in this documentary. I will take the journey along the r I'll visit some of its most important sites to learn more about its

history

and learn about some groundbreaking new archaeological discoveries that continue to tell us more about what life must have been like on this distant Frontier almost ago. 2000 years. Welcome to Hadrian's Wall, it is the year 122 AD. and the Roman emperor Hadrien is in northern Britain. Now, at this point, Hadrien has been Emperor for 5 years succeeding his adoptive father, the soldier Emperor Tran, but then he is very different from his predecessor, while Trun focused on expanding the Empire and Adrien's Conquest is a bit more realistic , focuses more on consolidation, he wants to be able to maintain the provinces and sustain the Borders, so what Hadrien does is embark on his famous journeys through the Empire visiting the Borders throughout the entire Roman Empire.

Empire and one of the borders he visits is here in northern Britain in 122 for the construction of his famous

wall

. He actually traveled throughout the Empire. He was very rarely in Rome. I think he is one of the least known emperors. He was in Rome during his reign. He liked to go see his Empire. He was very much an Empire soldier and while he traveled he was very interested in Greek culture. And in a way they called him the Consolidated Emperor. you know he no longer expanded his borders he was happy to consolidate them um we know he was gay he uh although he was also married and um he really mourned the loss of his lover Antinous um who died drowned in the n and here is the

wall

itself in all its glory.

This is particularly exciting for me because it's the first time I've come to this section of the wall and just looked at, look at it, the size of the stones in this impressive masonry that we originally had. I don't even know how tall it would have been, this is just a small remnant, but it would have been at least 12 feet tall and 3m thick initially, that was what they wanted to build from the beginning and imagine how impressive, it would have looked up back in time saying that this was in the Roman Empire which separated it, so to speak, from what Le be, the wall stretching across Britain from the walls ending in the East to the coast of Alma W Land at a length of 73 Mi is an astonishing achievement that begs the question why it was built well.

The short answer is that we're not exactly sure we have a reference in surviving literature that says it was built to separate the Romans from the barbarians and to be Honestly, our idea of ​​Roman Britain in the early 2nd century is clouded. . We hear references to possible riots and unrest in Britain at the moment. We hear that Roman detachments were sent to Britain. 3,000 men. We hear of experienced Roman governors being sent to Britain. Of course, Emperor Hadrien himself eventually visits to order the construction of his famous namesake. War hyan was known as a consolidating emperor, you know he didn't invade or take new territories, so maybe he just wanted to draw the line, the edge of Um, you know, this northwest edge of the Empire would have stopped some raids.

You know it would have been more of a barrier than anything, but if you were really determined to get through it, it could have been a CU tax line to get through. There were many gates to go through, but you would have had to go through this line and the Romans would have stopped you, so maybe it's to control access to taxes, it's a statement of power, isn't it? Know? This vast line that crosses the landscape, there are many reasons back then and we are still trying to understand that we will probably never

full

y understand it.

The construction of the wall begins in the year 122 AD. C. and has been around for approximately 6 years. The wall itself was built by detachments of the three Legions that were then. located in Britain and worked in detachments and worked in several places along the wall together, they were building it at the same time. Now the wall itself, as you can see here, was to be made of stone, but not along the entire length of the wall. wall because to the west of the river the land initially the wall was to be made of grass was a proven material for the Romans when building linear defenses it was cheap, easy to obtain and quick to build, but why did the Romans initially decide to use grass instead When the stone was built on the western third of Hadrian's Wall is still unclear, perhaps they are running out of time or resources.

It was several years later that this Turf wall was

final

ly upgraded to the stone wall we see today, so here we are on the north side of the wall and it is important to remember that even in its original construction the chicken wall did not stand alone because In front of the hen wall there are a

series

of obstacles, let's say, right in front of the hen's wool there would have been a deep ditch a wide ditch and between the ditch and the wool itself there would be a little piece of land called a burm and in the burm this is what I find particularly fascinating there would have been what we could call old barbed wire these were holes and fills These holes were filled with branches and pieces of wood.

All tangled, intertwined, they merge out of the pits and form this most impenetrable line of obstacles, like I said, basically old bare wire, and imagine what it would have been like for someone who tried it. To assault the wall you first had to go through this wide, deep ditch, you would have to climb up the other side of the ditch, then you would have to go through this barbed wire and at the same time you possibly had Roman soldiers throwing javelins. to you shooting arrows, shooting artillery bolts, even just to get to the wall, there would have been these obstacles that you would have to clear first and then you would have had to make your way through the wall itself, but what would that have been like?

I'm walking. along the path of a possible reconstruction of part of Hadrian's W. I say possible because many mysteries still abound around Hadrian's wool and its construction. One such mystery that remains hotly debated is whether Hadrian's wool had a catwalk. There is still a heated debate around that. and another key area is what the summit of Hadrian W looked like. Nowhere in the world do we really have an idea of ​​how high Hadrian's wo was in its original design. We know it was at least 12 feet tall, but beyond that mystery still abounds. Our knowledge of the wall itself is limited, but the Romans built much more than just the wall.

Scattered along the wall are strong and spectacular defenses that could hold up to a thousand soldiers to show me around when I met the most spectacular Englishmen. Heritage Curator Francis McIntosh Francis, first of all, this is an amazing place, where are we? So we're in the Deads house or verium, if you like the Latin name, one of the fors in the w and it's one of the famous fors because it's right up there. a hill if you look at the view we have and you can see all those lumps and bumps in the ground, possibly one of the quarries where some of the stone to build the fort came from, so the stone to build the fort doesn't come from miles away, it literally came from the other side of the hill, yeah, they would get it as close as possible because you know transporting it is very difficult, you know it costs a lot of money, it takes a lot of time to talk about the rans. and its footprint here looks like we're approaching the entrance to some really impressive ruins in the house.

Yes, we are just south of the fort. Here you can see that this is one of the buildings outside in the vcas and that is the south door. but first let's take a look at one of these buildings you go here and I'll tell you a little bit about the mystery that has been found absolutely mysterious so we're looking at some of the buildings in the vas so the civilian settlement outside the fort. These got prime locations because they're right on the doorstep, um, and we don't know what all of these buildings would have been. Some of them could have been shops, some of them could have been taverns, but in one of these buildings when they were excavated.

In the 50s and 60s they found two bodies buried underground. What were the floorboards? What do we know about these bodies? One is a woman, one is a man and the man had a dagger in his back or in the ribs stabbed in the back, yes. It's called The Murder House. You can think of some cool stories about why that might have happened and what happened was a bar bra went wrong, who knows, oh who knows, the mystery is that it's still about to stop at the fort, so I just left the murder house taking a few steps north and now we are in the fort proper, that's right, we are going to go through that double arch again, maybe they will ask us for a password or, um, why do we go in and then We enter and we are in the fort.

I mean, the first thing is not just walking in this fort. It is a fairly steep slope. They exactly wanted the prime position at the top of the hill, but that meant you know, Logistics maybe. It would have made it a little complicated and where do we go from here? We walk towards the heart. Yeah, well, let's walk to the top and you'll see, we'll pass the commanding officer's house on our left, so we're getting to the middle now, um and then the headquarters, do you want to look at the commanding officer's house? Let's take a look at that, yeah, so this would have been for the guy who was leading the army contingent that he was in.

In the auxiliary unit that was based here they would have had this entire house. Wow, it's really impressive when you think about the size of those barracks that eight soldiers live in. Now the commanding officers have a house that may not be so practical for In our British climate, they have a courtyard, so we're just going to go down to what would have been the courtyard, so it's a nice style courtyard house. Mediterranean, but how much use could it have outside the house? Yeah, I mean, today is glorious. No, but you see, it would possibly have had its own central heating.

If you want, we can go and take a look at some of the hypercor inside his house. I'm still starting to get there. groups the size of this house too, so it looks like a little Mediterranean village on the side of a North Umland hill, yeah, and it's huge when you look at it compared to a whole barracks that would have housed 100 men, you know? the Step Up is huge, the difference below I want to see the underfloor heating system, the hypercost, it is surprisingly well preserved, so these are the original foundations of the hypercore, so if you look deeper, we will look at it care

full

y .

We go down, there are a couple here that are made of some kind of tiles, uh, stone, and this one here, this is an old column base of something else that has been reused, reuse and recycle, recycling is not something new and for these I'm I guess they would never have seen them because it's under the floor, but they're using reusable material to create these things, like underfloor heating, yeah, so it all works as long as you have something high to hold up the floor. You can see there's another one there, an upside down column, but as long as it's the right height to support the floor, they don't care if you did the work, it fit exactly, so you can see here as we get to this.

A little bit flatter, this is really like you said, the heart of the um HQ building and it will be identical to the layout of the HQ building at any Fort, the one at Chesters will be a little bit bigger because it's a Cavalry Fort instead of infantry. So they had a bigger headquarters because the Cavalry was seen as a little better than the Infantry, but it's all the same and when you look forward you can see the eyes where the banners were strong wind, there is no strong wind visible here today unlike in Chesters, but you still have all these same features with the c, the original courtyard and you're walking through it and its different levels of access, but you can still visualize it, can't you just walk straight and see that wall in the back too is where the sign is, that's the back, yes, that's the back, so we enter the courtyard and then you can see we have another threshold with more rooms on each side and then this

final

threshold here reaches the sides and then Below us is where the vault is, but not uncovered, and here is a small collection of column bases, um, and column shafts that would probably have been used in the colonnade here, but are no longer there in its position.

The officer's house and headquarters are very impressive, but just behind them are the remains of another amazing structure, a unique building that is believed to have been where soldiers were treated, so we know that the army had doctors and that they took care of their sick, but it's very difficult to know if they had a specific hosle building or not, you know what a hosle building looks like, but the houses have this building that we don't have in any other form on the wall and itThe most similar thing we can solve is to compare this. It was probably the hospital, so we'll just climb the wall.

It's easier to get in this way and we're off. This is perhaps what we call an infirmary. You know, we don't really know, but again. it has a courtyard layout so if we come and stand here we can see this is the courtyard in the center there would be a covered walkway so you are standing in the covered walkway here um and then all these little rooms around the outside , presumably.where the sick were treated, it's quite interesting that there is a courtyard in the middle of this hospital building and they said that the buildings where people are treated seem to be on the edges, yes, so again it's a courtyard Mediterranean, you know?

They built what they knew, but they knew that air and air flow were good, and since they talked about fresh water and running water being better than stagnant water, they knew that an air flow was good for good health, so they would want to be. able to offer your soldiers some air and also keep air flowing through the rooms. I mean, yeah, and on a day like this, especially when the wind picks up because of the cold, you want somewhere where the air is flowing but it's not too cold either, it's sheltered, yeah. I would let you know that I imagine it was a small suntrap and from what you're saying, this is a unique example.

We have no other examples of hospitals in Haan, no, no, there are other buildings that are similar in other parts of the Empire. That's why they think this is the most likely use for this building because normally in a fort we know exactly what to expect. You have the Ming officers' house, the headquarters, the granaries and the barracks, all laid out, you know, very similarly and then I have this one that is a little different, but we know that they must have had hospitals or places to treat the sick because we talk, we know that they talk about treating the sick and Velander has reports that talk about the soldiers. being sick or receiving treatment so you're always looking for where that could have happened so you had the fancy commanders quarters a little further south and now you have the everyday soldier yeah these aren't the second and the third century. barracks in the 4th century The barracks are modified, um and we don't know if that's because the treatment numbers are different, if maybe families are allowed to move in, but it's no longer just eight men in a room, but It's not a very different plan.

So you can still imagine it, but these are what are known as Chalet Barracks, so they are separated, so it is not one block divided into rooms, but they are divided into individual buildings, so you will see here, there are actually a very long space, yes, yes, so there are spaces between each block, so again it is said to be a good example of showing the change over the 300 years that the site was occupied absolutely well compared With the ones we saw at s Shields, where the rooms said to be segmented, they seem quite small. you had eight men there and then you had a small part to unload the equipment.

This one feels much more spacious and is a later design, well it's about the same size but we don't know how many men would be here or what the design would be. It would be and for some reason they separated it completely, so it's not like it's just an internal wall that separates everyone and it says that you know the room that the cont stayed in but that he stayed is completely separated in an individual building, no. we know why um and home. is one of the places where it was found, but we assume that it happened in other forts and, again, you know, the garrison of the fort changed and the composition of the troops on the wall changed.

We talked about the troops there. Do we have any ideas? about the troops that served here, yes, in H stads we have evidence of um Tongans who are from modern Belgium from um from the German troops and also potentially archers from Syria, Syria again, from the eastern end of the Empire. Yes, incredible, that's right, while we are here, you are very interested in knowing where the wall was with the fort. Absolutely yes, let's go take a look at the right edge of the Empire one more time, that's all, so here comes Hadrian's Wall, which becomes the northern wall of the fort and then continues that way, so really you're at the north gate on the edge of the Empire and again that standard double arch, you meet two guard chambers, a really impressive structure and what do we know about the construction of the House?

Why do you decide to put? the north gate in the wall itself, um, so we just thought about doing the surveying, so along the wall you have several forts, the north wall of the fort is Haun's wall, some are astride it like Chesters, so it's just to do with the topography at each site, they make that decision and here, if W were astride the fort, the northern half of the fort would fall down that hill. I mean, they had enough challenges, didn't they build like we've talked about? up, but it was like, they had a little bit of flexibility to be able to make those decisions and you're talking about geography and topography, now we're talking about how far you can see to the south but also to the front.

Plus, this feels like a really dominant strategic position where you'd want to build a fort on Hadrian's Wall. Yes, that's right, we originally thought of the forts as a secondary plan, but the original plan for the Fort would be to have them in every set. period, so every seven to six miles, however, I think they realized that the house heads' plan would have reached a big ditch, so they moved it up here, so again they have a plan, but They can do it. Think well, that's not the way, yes, we'll move it, yes, up here and it's the same with the decision of whether Fort is straddling or straddling the wall, so it makes a lot more sense, isn't it to have the top here in this view?

The wall here is spectacular, but there's another feature of the Deads house that I'm looking forward to seeing, so Francis, we've now made our way down to the southeast corner of the forest. That's how it is. I'm looking at this large rectangular structure. it has a purpose to do with water, yes it is a large water storage tank and a really cool feature of it is this cable that you can see through some of the spaces and that is there to link and bind the stones together to keep it. airtight, so this lead from almost 2000 years ago, as he said, was used to bind the stones together to keep the water in the tank, that's a really nice survival.

Oh, and what are these canals here where the water would go? They are just drains. It collects this water because as you mentioned we are in the southeast corner so there would have been a large flow of water to the one below, so this drain comes out and joins the end of the toilet run, while this one joins And enter. The bathroom, ah, has many layers, doesn't it? And you mention the bathroom, let's go and take a look, yeah, they are the best views down here, and this bathroom is a community bathroom that would have served the entire fort, yeah, yeah, it's um. one of the largest latrines we know of, a really rare survival species for us to have and in such good condition, so if you take a look you can see those stone flags that would have been supported by wooden seats. that would run all the way through here, the bowls or the troughs in the middle have water, we think for hand washing and then this channel, this drain here would have running water for you to dip your kind of toilet equivalent to toilet paper.

Obviously the famous thing is the sponges, but I mean they're not very common in Britain. At Bear's Den on the nondescript wall in Scotland, a lot of moss was found in the bathhouse there, so we think it's more likely an absorbent material and you would find a lot of moss here or maybe some other material vegetable that you could have for your ablutions and everything is said to have flowed down, so it is so that you know that it is a long fall and then there would be running water. in this drain um that's tilted so that everything ran away um down and into the vus I mean, I found that Fasina said that you have the civil session right there, on the other side of this wall and in one of the closest buildings that there is. they're close to the fort itself, there's the toilets, yeah, they're just draining and, you know, once you leave the fort, the army doesn't care, it's no longer their business, isn't it exactly a house?

The dead are just one too many. More than a dozen forts along the wall, but even that was not enough to keep the border secure, so there were other structures between the forts. The Romans loved regularity in their construction and this cannot be seen more clearly throughout Hadrian's work than in his mile. castles now, these were built every Roman mile and a Roman mile in today's measurements is about 1 kilometer and a half and I have come to one of the best preserved on Hadrian's Wall. This is my 48th castle, also known as Portess Burn Mile Castle and the The first thing you see when you come here you realize that it is on a very steep slope, but the Romans didn't mind at all and adapted it to your needs.

Now, where I am now, it's basically near the South Gate of the castle and there would be a road that would go through it, so let's imagine I'm a traveler, I have a horse and a cart, a mu or cart or something like that and I want to go north of the wall. I would have to go through this. Mile Castle, so I would enter this entrance arch through the gates at the bottom, this south side of the fort, I will walk through there, there will be soldiers around, these remains here are the remains of the barracks blocks, were they terrorists? here? one there, so there were auxiliary soldiers around, about 30 or 40 of them.

I'm guiding my goods and my animal through and right in front of me would have been this very imposing north wall embedded in Hadrian's Wall. maybe even a tower like point marked on top of the gatehouse up there, very imposing and I would walk through the gatehouse if they let me through. I would go through the gates and out into the barbarian country now, as I mentioned earlier, the Romans. They had dug a ditch in front of Hadrian's Wall, but this is where the Romans were clever, they wanted to control the traffic to the north, so in front of the M castles they had a ditch crossing for someone like me with an animal, this was where I had to cross in order to cross the ditch and further north once again, really emphasizes how the key purpose of the masts was to manage traffic.

This is a really interesting part of milecastle 48 PTR mile Castle because these are the stairs to the north gate in this mile castle that the Roman soldiers, the auxiliary soldiers, would have walked to get to the top of this north gate and you will not find this anywhere else on the wall and in no other mile castle can you find steps like these and From there we can get an idea of ​​how big the wall must have been, how high it must have been or at less how high it could have been. Because of this, from the stairs we know that it was at least 12 T high in this place. along the wall, this mile castle not only shows us the military AR side of an auxiliary's life.

Another really cool little feature about Mile 48 Castle is this round structure. There is a stone oven here and from it we are learning a little more about the auxiliary soldiers and how they cook their food and it is very interesting, we assume from this archeology that the soldiers stationed here were stationed here for a considerable period of time, such Once a few weeks, a few months, we do not believe that there were changes in the mile castles. during that time they probably spent a little time here and then returned to the nearby Fort, but again, it's a nice little insight into the food side of an auxiliary's life, not just all the barracks, patrols and management , so it's a good other There's a little angle we can see here of life on the border, but even these 81 castles weren't enough to defend the wall between each mile.

Castle on the wall there were initially going to be two smaller buildings called turrets or watchtowers and in Vindel Landa we were lucky. We have two reconstructions of such buildings to my right, we have a stone tower. Initially these towers would have been located east of the Irving River along with the stone wall and here to my left we have a wooden tower and these would have been built west of the river so why do we think these turrets west of the River Irving were initially made with wood? The short answer is that we're not exactly sure the debate continues, but it could be because in the early 2nd century.

And this part of the world was more of a danger zone, perhaps the tribes a little further north were more hostile and that's why the Romans, instead of spending more time creating a stone tower, wanted to build something faster and therefore That's why they used wood, but it's also possible that it's because that part of the wall was made of grass and wood at the beginning too, so maybe togo in line with that, maybe it was because the tribes were fiercer, more dangerous, more hostile to the but eventually even these wooden towers were transformed and also turned into stone.

Wow, so I just reached the top of the stone turret here in Feranda and we believe that these turrets would have had some auxiliary soldiers mainly maintaining it. Look Beyond the Wall, looking for small warbands of bandits and managing traffic, watching traffic coming in and out of the wall, perhaps passing through nearby castles and as I mentioned we think there might have been some auxiliary soldiers here, perhaps a Messenger 2 on horseback to raise the alarm to a nearby fort or even a mile castle if they saw any potential enemy activity to the north and also right here it could be that they had a siege engine and in particular the most famous one or one of the most famous.

Roman siege engines were called scorpions. Now, this was a really ingenious deadly device. Think of it as a large mechanical crossbow, it was typically mounted on wood and fired highly accurate bolts at incredible distances beyond what a bow could shoot an arrow and as I mentioned. It's very accurate and you would have someone here who could possibly be guiding it if they saw an enemy soldier approaching or someone who looked hostile and was attacking, maybe crossing the ditch or something, they could fire this bolt launcher and if it went through, if it went through a attacker.

They were almost dead in most cases because these rays were very powerful and it is possible that the small group of auxiliaries stationed in turrets like these would have had one of these artillery pieces, as we have seen the Romans build so many more than just the wall itself, it's the mile castles, it's the turrets, it's the forts, but it's also linked, there are outpost forts to the north of the wall and it's linked to um, you know the settlements south of the wall like Corbridge and in You know that Road Network, dear. Street and um to York and um to the west as well, the Romans also built one of the most enigmatic

ancient

archaeological features found in the north of Britain, so now I'm just south of Hadrian's Wall and you can see here the slightly slanted size which is formed in a ditch and this was originally a Roman construction now at about the same time the forts were added to the curtain wall of Hadrian's Wall they built another structure just south of the wall right here and this was called valum and it was about 20 feet wide and on each side it had sloping sides, but also on top of these sloping sides they had a mound on each side and this mound was created by the workers who were building the valum, building the ditch, getting the loot and throwing it on both sides to create this.

Quite steep mound on both sides, so it was a very impressive structure in Roman times, unlike the wall itself, it looks like this. This ditch was not built by the legionaries but by auxiliaries and what was its purpose. Well, with so much going on with Hadrian's Wall, we're not. I'm sure the debate continues, possibly it was to mark the southern limit of the militarized zone, so any traveler coming from the south and wanting to pass Hadrian's Wall when they crossed this ditch there would be bridges or something to cross the ditch for travelers with cars. and cars and things like that when they crossed this ditch and went north they knew that they were entering the territory of the soldiers who were entering the military zone but as I said the debate continues almost 2,000 years after its construction Hadrian's W continues Fascine from well-preserved forts like houses rising above the local landscape to the mile castles and what remains of the wall itself.

No wonder it was Rome's largest

frontier

. Next time I will learn more about what life was like for those who lived along and near the wall I will visit the northernmost city of Roman Britain and a coastal area that was dramatically transformed when another Roman emperor arrived in Britain leading one of the largest armies to ever set foot on this island. Key military features of Hadrian's wool, but the wall could not function without supplies. A constant flow of supplies was essential for those who ran it. In this episode, I'm going to look at two places that aren't on the wall but had key logistical links.

I have reached it and my first stop is here at the mouth of the river. I have arrived in South Shields on the eastern edge of Newcastle, quite an urban environment and not far from the sea, but in front of me here we have one. One of the most impressive reconstructed Roman forts I have ever seen is South Shield Roman Fort, known in Roman times or at least late Roman times as our Roman Fort and this is where our story will begin, the first fort in South Shields it was built around 120 AD. Approximately 80 years after the Romans first landed in Britain with Claudius' invasion force and the construction of South Shield aligns nicely with the construction of Hadrian's Wall, which also began around 120 AD. about 122 AD, but one of the things I should mention first is that the F of South Shield was not on the world of Hran itself, it was too far to the east, the actual eastern end of Hran ended up that way westward through time at the end of the Wall and the Roman Fort of se dunam, but nevertheless, SA Roman plays a key role in the

history

of Hen's rule, particularly with regard to logistics and, in more than one sense, now the first way is what protected the South Shield Roman Fort because we believe that this fort protected a vital seaport at the mouth of the River Th and this seaport would have been crucial in bringing supplies to those who were crewing along the wall; was this vital gateway to the wall from the sea and also for people who came to visit the wall and Inspect the South Shield Roman Fort, one of the key roles it plays is to protect this port which helps support those who are manning the wall and also possibly during its early stages those who were building it, some people in the past have speculated that it was actually the Romani who supplied the Hadran Wall from the Ti River so effectively.

If you are protecting the entrance to the TI River, you are protecting access to Hadrian's Wall and remember that almost all the goods that went to the military at Hadran Wall came from nowhere. The interior of the Hran Wall did not come from the north or west of Britain, they came from the south and east, for example all the iron manufactured to provide all the weapons and all the equipment for the troops at the Hen Wall came from the wield in Kent which would then have been transported around the coast to the northeast and then to the it and then almost certainly using the th to reach Adam's wall, another reason why this fort is so important in the history of the Hran war and also in The history of Roman Britain is what South Shields became now, around the 3rd century.

There was a major change in this fort, particularly with the development of all these buildings. Here they were now barns and you can see them through the slightly raised floor. to allow air to rise underneath and in Roman forts it was not unusual to have granary buildings, but what is so notable about some shields is the number of approximately 24 granaries that were found here, it was one of the main types of buildings in this fort, one of the really interesting things about South Shield is that you can see that this location is almost a time machine, so you can see that initially it was a fort with 600 men based there and then it became a huge supply base to maintain the army with 50,000 men. in the field during Seign's seven campaigns in the far north of Britain, but later, during the Roman occupation of Britain, it is again a fort.

Initially it had two barns and then, in the Severn period, 22, so this increased by a factor of 10, but later. when not used as logistics space, some of the granaries are reused again as barracks for the Roman auxiliaries and we are very lucky because we know the names of some of these auxiliary units and one of them curiously remembers where we are talking about. We're talking about the far north east of Britain, one of the units came from the Tigris in Mesopotamia, so all that really survives today of the grany is this base, but in Roman times there would have been a stone slab floor above and below .

These stone slabs, as you can see here, were these channels and they also emerge here where the outer wall would have been now, it was through these channels that the air would flow and keep the food above dry and also keep out pests like rats. away from all important food supplies, so you would have had all kinds of foods like grains, meat, maybe even olive oil and wine. It's amazing how many granaries here and how much food must have been here. It really emphasizes that this supply station was not only for the soldiers in South Shields, but also for the soldiers along this border, so why did South Shields need so many granaries?

At the beginning of the 3rd century, a Roman emperor arrived in northern Britain and his name was Septimus Severus Septimus cus. He was one of the greatest Roman warrior emperors. He became emperor in 193 AD. C. in the year of the five emperors, when he was the final winner, he became the founder of the Severn dynasty and, finally, at the end of his life, this great conqueror. The Roman Emperor decided that he wanted to do the one thing that no other Roman Emperor had done; many had tried but no one had done it: conquer the far north of Britain and provide it with a kind of modern and popular context.

This is almost like Game of Thrones, it's so far from normal that the Romans would try to do this on the scale they did, which was a surprising attempt because he came to South Shields and thought it would be a key logistics base. For his campaign, PS further north, being close to C2, was also very suitable for his fleet. He had the largest field force ever on British soil, more than 50,000 men. Now, to keep 50,000 men in the field, you don't just need transports. Not only do you need training, not only do you need legionnaires, you need food and you need resources, so he decided to create three main logistics bases on the northeast coast, so the first one is in IT, which is South Shields, the second one is in Creme which is in the fourth and the last one is in carpus which is in the Tay and you can imagine when Seus was marching north with his armies, these supply trains that would have been going back and forth between Severus' army and the supply station in the south.

Shields, so these granaries are a great example of how South Shields as a fort evolved and retained its military purposes, but also, as we can see, became a key supply station, firstly for Severus, but then became Even more central to supplying those situated along Hadrian's Wall, what I find so interesting about South Shield's Fort Rona is how the granaries are all centered in the center of this fort and the barracks are located, for so to speak, on its edge of this edge of the fort, now these barracks I have an original here, the foundations of the original and a reconstruction of what it might have been like there.

These barracks were built around 225 AD, so when this fort was a supply station and there were six barracks that were meant to house the fifth. ghoul cohort now, this large room at the end was meant to house the Centurion cohort and he had this luxurious space, it was much larger than the rest, as we'll see in a second, where he would have had his family and his slaves. It would have been very nice to live unlike the people who live right next to it because here you would have had eight soldiers in this apartment, this was called a coneria and you will notice how this apartment is divided in two, you have this big back area here. this larger area in the back would have been where those eight soldiers would have slept eight soldiers would have been quite cozy and here in the smaller part at the front this was where they would have put their equipment this is where they would have prepared their meals and it was divided up like this way throughout this barracks, you have the same thing here and the same thing there and so on there were five of these small compact apartments, so in total there were 40 soldiers of a cohort in one of these long, thin barracks buildings along with the Centurion in its most luxurious accommodations at the other end.

Now this barracks, as I mentioned earlier, was built approximately around the year 225 AD, but it didn't last long because by the end of that century it had burned down. We believe there was a raid on South Shields and this barracks fell victim to it and the name of this barracks was for the fifth ghoul cohort, but this auxiliary unit was not the only unit we know lived inthis strong, it is worth remembering. In the Roman Empire, this is a very cosmopolitan place, so it is not unusual to find soldiers operating in the most remote corners of the Empire, far away from where they were born and recruited.

That's not just warriors recruited as individuals into a unit. entire units, so we have this unit of Tigress boatmen boatmen who may have used their own maritime technology, they may not have used GS as we know them, etc., they may have used maritime technology that we know from the time in the Euphrates. tigress and were here in ARA in the 4th century AD. ARA The name of the Roman fort here is believed to mean the land of the Arabs, so it could be that the name of this fort is linked to these boatmen who came from the far east. of the Empire to reside at the South Shield Roman Fort near the end of the Roman occupation of Britain.

Ara was above all a military installation. My next location started out as a fort, but became much more about showing me around. I'm meeting the curator of English Heritage. Francis McIntosh Hi Hi Francis, thank you very much for joining me today, welcome to Corbridge or corer as it was known in Roman times. Well, I must admit that one of the most extraordinary things, first of all, was how big the place is, yes, yes, we were standing. right at the edge, um, and you can see in front of us the remains, however, this is only a small part.

We think Roman Corbridge would have been around 50 acres so it would have covered all the fields around us and this is actually a really good place. point to talk about how it is connected to the rest of Roman Britain, so over that hill, dear street, came the Roman road that ran north from York to Haun's Wall and beyond Haun's Wall, down that hill, crossed the river that is out of sight. I went up this field and then with dog legs and entered the site and joined what we call the Puerta de la Mancha, the road from east to west that goes to Carile and having these two roads right in the center of this Roman cement is the key to why.

It's here, um initially, so the Romans came here first as a fort. Well, I mean, the first 2 kilometers that way in the late 70s for about 10 years and it was as part of the movement towards Scotland, so to conquer the whole of the island like the Romans originally tried and then they moved here, which is a better point, we think maybe it's better VI's ability to monitor maybe the bridge crossing to see Dear Street um and it was a place for here from the late 80's to maybe around the 160's and As you may know, every fort has a city on the outside, what we call a vus, when the fort was abandoned the vas and the civilians there just took over and it became a city, that's when the crossroads became becomes really important because we think that's why the city continues instead of just being completely abandoned because it's at a key point for trade, it becomes a city in its own right, it surpasses the fort which seems quite notable throughout the Hadrian's W SES in its own right, yes it is truly amazing and is the most northerly town in Roman Britain.

At the moment we are on one of the roads, outside the next stage of Corbridge, so Corbridge is a really complex place. sometime in the 2nd century, after the soldiers left, some of them returned, there is a gap, but it is not the returning auxiliary troops that staff and supply the rest of Hadrian's wall, these non-citizen troops , are the legionnaires, these citizen soldiers. the ones that built Adrian's wall and set up their tents or camped in what we call these two little complexes that are like mini, so we walk down the road outside one of them and they go into the city, so we'll see when we walk further by the site What are the Romans best known for their straight lines?

Aren't they pretty? Square walls, you know. Square shapes can't do that boldly because they're trying to fit in with what civilians have. already done, I mean, you talk about that complexity there and you mentioned civilians and soldiers, does this really suggest that it was a fairly cosmopolitan society? Oh, absolutely, so we have soldiers who could be from any part of the Empire. We don't know exactly where all the troops came from. We have evidence of Greek speaking people here. We have evidence of a man from Palmyra, which is modern-day Syria, so people from all over the Empire become brave, as you know. up on the wall and they're here 2m south of the wall doing things selling things, but all these soldiers on the wall you mentioned a man from Palmyra there, he told me that's basically the eastern edge of the Empire and that maybe it's a Trader or you know, stationed here, that's something on the northwest edge of the Empire, you couldn't really spread out much further at that point and still be in the same Empire and so what are these remnants that we're passing by? now we're in part of the eastern complex, so that's when these legionaries arrived in the late 2nd or 3rd century and we're on a little road in the middle, so it's like a mini fort, they would have had some barracks.

It's quite complicated to see because after the legions left again, they came and left again, these buildings are taken over by civilians again, but there is a small barracks there, it would be a headquarters if we enter the western complex. We'll be able to say later that it's a really good venue, but you can see and I'm sure you noticed that all the walls go up and down. Yes, some idea is the wood under the small unevenness, so now we are as we are on most of the site. on top of the original fort, so when the fort was abandoned in the '60s, we might think that the barracks seemed to be made of wood, they were demolished and flattened, not removed, and then everything was flattened for them to build whatever that is on top, obviously, as you know. the wood rots so the lines there are where the wood was laid and with shoddy workmanship so we Romans are showing a different face in Corbridge aren't we?

You know they're known for their straight, really routine lines and square shapes. which we don't have here and not necessarily the best workmanship, but I mean, we don't know when the wall started to sink, so it could have only been in the last few hundred years, in which case it did its job for the Romans. It is absolutely possible to see Rome's military presence in Corbridge today, including the remains of a vital underground structure situated right in the heart of the fort. So what are we looking at here? Francis. This is the underground vault. The underground vault.

So every strong. At headquarters there was a strong room where the standards were kept and it's where all the salaries and any other type of important documents were kept, so in Chesters you will see that we have a strong room with the roof still intact, um, but courage here we have a mini fort room because we have a mini fort almost like our mini complex um and yet those steps are still the original steps to go down um and it's just in the type that it should be in the most sacred part of the fort um to protect the salary both physically and spiritually because the standards were really revered, so if you are below the standards, then you are also protected by the kind of respect of that, as well as not stealing from your colleagues, paying the money well.

I take the step down, I absolutely do, so again you can see what the floors are like. Chang is this, you know, the first step, but yeah, so a very important figure in the fort would come down here below the headquarters, you have the standards right above and then he would come down here with the important job of getting the payment, bringing it again and distribute it to the right men and maybe you know official documents that can or orders that can be secret, you know we don't. I don't know, but yeah, having this still around is really amazing.

I love the steps, they are beautiful, they are very solid, yes, and these are the original sets. Look at it, it has been preserved very well because obviously it was. underground so it hasn't been ravaged by stone thieves as much as by the things up here, fantastic, well they definitely love their steep steps too. I admit that the Roman military complexes in Corbridge are unusual and in more ways than one, so Francis, what are they? We're looking here, so this is the outer edge of the eastern complex now, if you ask someone to describe a Roman four or you know it's shaped like a playing card, all very straight lines, however, if you look here, it curves and then It has dog legs. and we can walk in that direction and that's because these buildings here, which you can see a little bit of the buildings facing the street, probably shops that would later have workshops in the back and accommodation for PS on the floor of up, they're already there when these legionnaires return and for some reason because you know you assume the army would have the power to expel them, but they don't.

I like to think it's just because you know they know someone would get really angry and it would cause too many things. Hoa and they know they're going to be here and they have to live next to them, but you see, this is another one, it's a short building and they've taken it to the edge, so they haven't evicted it. person, but they probably bullied you because it's like someone building a greenhouse, isn't it up to your curator to bully old bullying if you walk up here we can't social distance because look how narrow it is so you know they didn't sign up. invade his space or hers, but yes, it's quite interesting how you see the legionnaires and the shops, the merchants side by side once again and, as you say, it's not that they're not tearing down the shops, no, they are building around them exactly, etc. which we talked about in the 3rd century Corbridge is a bit of a Garrison town, so people talk about catrick, don't they today with the huge Garrison catrick?

The soldiers and their families live in the city and that city prospers thanks to that market in courage we have soldiers and civilians living side by side and these civilians are going to supply both these soldiers and the soldiers on the wall, so It's a really symbiotic relationship, all these courage merchants probably wouldn't have survived if the wall had been It's not there because that's their market. You know all these men are paid money, but there's nowhere to go to spend it other than potentially Corbridge, so even though Corbridge isn't on the wall, he has a strong connection to the wall and that's the right fertile connection. . economic connection, yes, yes, I'm sure many of the merchants here would have had contracts with the army, personal ties to the army, because you know the army has been on the wall for almost 300 years, they claim that the fame, the courage is here for the longest time, but You know we don't like to earn too much, so you know they benefit from each other, the army gets supplies and the people here earn money and speaking of communication routes, this is an important Roman route during the Roman occupation of Britain, absolutely yes. so you can see all the way back to where the visitors are having their picnic in the sun, go into that field and continue to carile, which is about 30 or 40 miles, we don't know the line all the way.

We connected the dots a little bit at some points, we know it went there and as we walk back we can see the different levels, so when they dug here, here we are like a kind of central bridge from the 4th century and then, if low. We're at earlier levels because obviously the Romans built on top, on top, on top, um, so we can see the development of Sayan, its topography, so the road itself we can see the evolution, so to speak, throughout the centuries, from the different layers that survive. today it is true yes so they didn't remove it and repave it they just resurfaced on top and this road has been used by the Romans for over 300 years before they left so yes and what does it tell us the archeology about the shops that were located next to it? this main arterial road, it's probably a good time to take you to site 11, absolutely, let's take a look and I mean the name of site 11 is a bit rubbish, isn't it for a site?

It's not like the barns or the complexes, but it's because no one is going to compromise on what we thought it was or what it should be, so if you take a look at it, start where those big blocks are and work your way up to where you can see the big blocks there. so it takes up a lot of the site and in the middle you have these two buildings that were made of much smaller stone than the rest, so they are older buildings that have not been completely demolished, so you know, we said they are at the both of the Old Fort plan, yes, they are the HQ and Commanding Officer's House of the Old Fort and someone's FL. ed most of this site forbuild site 11, but they didn't finish them and got rid of them, so what they did.

From the clues we know, this building was never finished because if you're building a big structure you don't leave two ruins in the middle, so site 11 is huge, we think maybe it started around 160 and 180. Notice, I say which we think that many times the archeology of courage is a bit iffy on the precise date and was possibly intended to be a large warehouse or perhaps a market, some people have called it a forum or melum, like and dictate. things you've seen at Pompe and other places but the bottom line you can't really see because it was never built above the foundation levels was never completed just this South Range that we see and the two little wings and then behind her.

I always say it's a bit like a film set, so it would have looked beautiful in the front where we walked, this is our entrance here, um, but behind it there's just ruins in the back, but these are our shops in the street, ah, so this is it. our entrance to site 11 and each of these were shops that faced the street, so it became a row, yes, a row of shops that faced the street where we are, they were their types of entrances and you can see here its um bases for pillars, so it would have been a covered walkway if it occasionally rains in the north of England, you have your covered walkway so you can shop and it was in this area where archaeologists discovered something extraordinary in the second century, there were barracks around. here, so we have in our previous Fort and under the road outside a Barracks, someone we assume that a soldier buried a chest about this size of a wooden chest with iron trim and leather lining W and then filled it with armor and the Lura. segmentata you know that famous legionary soldier um armor I would say it looks a bit like an armadillo with some personal belongings with tools with everything and we very imaginatively called it the Corbridge horde the corrid horde and he said this was buried by a soldier before siege 11 became what we now know, yes, exactly, so Corby is an absolutely fascinating F, but he is also a very good example of what is found here and now we talk about site 11, but when he was buried it was not site 11 , so it may confuse, yes.

He may confuse visitors, but there were barracks and streets below here before Site 11 was built and we don't know why he buried it. Such a modern army, you know you have the cores of real engineers, etc., and specialists and other things in it. The Roman army within a legion and within an auxiliary troop the soldiers have all the skills, so there would be masons, there would be architects, there would be doctors, clerics, there would also be armorers, so our best guess for The Horde of Courage is which was the type of spare parts and the um tools of a suit of armor that was also a soldier, so there were parts of six suits but not a complete suit, there were 20 or 30 Speare heads, so the iron bit but none of the halves, but they were all grouped together and then their tools and so if a section of your Lura, your Lura segment is going to break, it's really smart, you can take that section and replace it with another one, so it makes a lot of sense for the gunsmith who he would be collecting all the spare parts if he didn't do it so he could repair his suit, so it's absolutely fascinating because before that, before 1964, we knew that guy. of the armor, you know it was known, but nobody found much, so they didn't really understand, you know how a suit can be made, how it can be used, how it can be repaired, which is really key when the army is out of home. and because so many things were found in Courage, they were able to rebuild it for the first time, which is really exciting in the geek world of military equipment, but also in the world in general it's pretty exciting because understanding how these things were used and used .

Um, we found leather straps that held the pieces of metal together, which shows how flexible CU was before people saw it in sculptures and said, well, I don't know if that's really very practical, but thanks to this find we were able discovering all this, which is amazing, so we have to thank this possible SL legionary blacksmith for burying all this equipment that we have now found almost exactly 2000 years later and then you have the mystery of why he buried it. Didn't you come back? Mysteries tied together, right? Yes, so Francis, where are we now? Okay, well, we were right on the back edge of site 11.

I thought just before we pop up at the aqueduct, I'd show you how big it is. was and is easier to see now because if you look where the path is, you can see that panel there along that grass edge and that grass bank that is site 11, it's a huge area within what we consider an

ancient

city. It's not exactly that, that's why people are baffled because it's so big that someone had a huge ambition for a huge project that didn't quite come to fruition, but they still use the front end, but yeah, what was going on, who Who was planning to build something like that?

Well, we hope they can answer those questions soon enough, but what's up this hill? So we're going to go take a look at the aqueduct so all the Roman forts and cities require water supply, obviously, um, but it's rare for the aqueduct to survive, so it's very big and wide. Most of the Stone has been looted, so it's a little bubbly. You can see the drains on both sides. Oh yes, I would have continued to that field. I'm not entirely sure which stream it came from, there are a couple of which could have supplied the town, but it's really impressive how much has survived even though we know so much that stone theft has occurred, you'll very rarely see this.

You already know a lot about the water wall and you can see where the width has been stolen from it, so it's a really big construction because obviously water is very important to the functioning of a city. The Romans understood to a certain extent about germs and things not to the extent that we would, but they knew that running water was better than stagnant water, so when we get to the Fountain we will see that they had sedimentation tanks, so that the water was not stagnant because they knew that running water was much healthier, much better, um. and now I am in the aqueduct, but later generations have completely stolen it. uh, the modern central bridge there.

Much of it is built from Roman Corbridge, but you can see here that this is part of the platform, so it would have been in at least two tanks up to the tank where people could come and take the water, okay, so it runs down, so we have some decorative stone, um, but it's again an absolutely vast construction, isn't it? and those stones there that are really warm, that's why people lean over and drag their bucket, so we know these things were used for a long time and you won't see a fountain in a Roman because you might see a whale or a tank, but not a fountain like this so this is something really unique when I love what you said about those scratches there so the scratches that you can see or the wear and tear that is from 2,000 years ago from people coming over trying to get water for absolutely yes.

So some of them are quite soft over time, but yeah, it's really amazing and we know that the big pillar behind you here and its brother on the other side would have held statues, so it was ornate, it was decorative, it wasn't just functional. It was a great statement, not bad for the northernmost city in Roman Britain, is it exactly yes? I mean, frany, something that caught my attention is that little space under the road, what is it? It's another drain. The Romans love drainage, so we went down and You can take a better look so you can see now that we're underneath, below the surface of the road, which is a drainage under the road to keep the water flowing.

The rooms again understood the power of water to destroy things, as people will attest to today and the rest. These drains would have been covered originally because this would have been where you would lean over and get water, yeah, so all of this is basically below floor level for when it was in Roman times for them to get their water, but the water that poured into excess wherever it fell below the drain and then came out of Corbridge exactly yes, from the source to the forts. The surviving archeology of Corbridge is astonishing and there is one more building that should be seen, a very familiar type of building, so Francis, what do we have here?

They look like the base of some incredible pillars, yes, they are very big, right? And that's because they're here to support a covered porch or a canopy to protect the entrance to the barns which we can see again, we're talking about floor level, that's the floor level there, so it looks like there's remnants of stone slabs on top of these channels underneath, that's right, it's a raised floor to keep air flow and keep moisture out, but also to keep pests out, so rats and mice, it's a really impressive structure, these barns absolutely. And as far as these stones are concerned, of course the wall is largely made of local stone and it is the same with Corbridge.

Is everything quite local? and moving stone is a lot of work so you want to get it as close as possible because you know it saves money and time. So we know that there are quarries locally spread all over the place. It is sometimes difficult to know for sure whether a quarry was used in the Roman period because often, if it was used in the Roman period, it was also used in the medieval and post-medieval period and they erased all signs of Roman work, but people is starting to look at the geology and see if You can compare the geology of the stones, but not as local as possible, so this is our Eastern barn here if you can see the buttresses that have been built on both, so again.

Monumental construction. These were built to last. And what's really nice. If we walk around here being careful again with our distance, you can absolutely see these windows, well they are not windows to allow air flow, it is really rare that they have survived in situ, these old Roman vents were yes, yes, brilliant and because It looks like a Roman fort around Hinv South Shields to the east as well, it's got all these granaries and it all seems to follow a fairly similar design. They knew what they wanted to do when they were building them, yes, so if I went to a fort in Syria.

Say you know, says Bares, our palmy was based in Syria and then he came here and settled in houses. He would know exactly where everything was because a fort was a fort was a fort, the commanding officer's house and um headquarters were in the middle, everything will be laid out on a grid system and I think, in part, it's the Roman efficiency, everything should be the same, but it's also pretty sensible because if they wake you up in the middle of the night with an alarm, you know someone is coming. You will always know how to get out because you will always be stationed in a fort that has the same layout, so it is also a good military tactic and given the amount of corach that has been discovered, there are small amounts given the size of the site. it's how much we still have to discover, how much we have, so we have this site here so visitors can see that it was handed over to the nation in the 1930s, but every field outside of it has R and Corbridge and we have seen that, either through excavations in the OD guardian periods or through geophysical surveys or aerial photography, so the site is at least 50 acres.

We know where some of the cemeteries are, so we know it's definitely the edge of the city, but then in the middle, we know the city. there's and the cemeteries there's a modern city that's maybe covering up some of that so we don't really know it's huge that's very exciting to hear for the future. Yes, archeology in Corbridge and South Shields has shown remarkable light. not only about how the Hadrians supplied themselves, but also about the economy of this

frontier

, from the shipping of weapons and armor down the river to the rich variety of goods that would have been available along Rome's northernmost main street. , these sites may not be located on the wall. itself, but they are no less extraordinary the next time you visit Britain's best-preserved cavalry fort and an ancient temple dedicated to one of the most mysterious cults of antiquity.

So far in this

series

we have looked at various topics related to Hadrian's Wall, we look at the wall itself, we look at the military, we look at the settlements, we look at the supply, but in this episode we will focus more on what life was like on the wall . issues such as hygiene and worship, how did the people who were stationed at this border adapt to daily life? These people would in many cases have come from places hundreds of miles away, so life in Hadrian's War would have been very different for many of those soldiers.

Don't forget that the Empire is huge,Heat would continue to flow underneath, so it won't be as hot because we're obviously a little further away. fire, but still quite warm, so, you know, a less super hot TAA, well, the last thing you tell me is that you mention in these slits here that it was interesting, so we know that originally there was a door here too, yeah, that to crash into Um, so yeah, and you can see how it's very smooth. The stone is worn down from all the wear, you know, hundreds of feet. Absolutely yes, so we go through it this way, so we have the pivot hole here, that's what the door would have been rotated into.

So that's a Hing backbone, yeah, and now we're moving into the steam room, so this is dry, this is even harder to describe because the whole floor is gone, so all the Hyper Co that we were mentioning before it disappeared. We would have to float because this is the floor level in period r. Some steps have been created using some arches in the roof and we are inside what was the Hyper Co. You know, up to my waist. If you imagine that we will be. walking around here and the steam is created from the water here, so there would be some kind of fountain, um, and then also a hot bath there, so the steam will come out of both, so you will be warm, dry , hot, warm and then he will go down to the cold, so I'm imagining a Roman soldier, he came down from the fort, he went through the locker room, or he went down to the cold or he went up to the hot pot, he went through the doors, of course, he said level top back then and said now going into the steam room and once again you have this chamber connected that is basically pumping and doing all the work to create this so the furnace is on that side and there are puddles there, but here there will be water again with more heat for Yes, a really smoky atmosphere and it would have been hot on the floors, so you had to use wood, we think wooden clogs, to protect your feet because you are transmitting heat directly into the stone, which will make it is very difficult to walk. at all and I guess this then then this this area must have been off limits was this was um so again it's um with the but with the other oven on the outside so these are the channels to let the heat in but obviously it had to have a pretty good foundation because it has water in it, whereas before you had the normal, you would normally have hyperside pillars for the floor, but that probably wouldn't be enough to support a bath, so they put these are four big basic pillars with channels for heat, so yeah, a bath, a water fountain and then all of this heats up and everything would be very smoky because of the steam coming out of those two water fountains and what other archeology have we discovered. of this very well preserved military Bum so we have understood the type of potential flow and changes so come here this is another door so the door jams would have been here and the door would have been in the middle , so I could have gone through there, there's a door there that's been closed.

If you take a look, this was the original door. It's been closed, so you see it's been used for so long. They would have changed. You know, the way that. They used it interesting, they found a beautiful altar here for Fortuna, who is the Goddess of appearance and gambling, so we know that you didn't just come to the bathhouse to cleanse yourself, but you came to socialize, gossip and probably to gamble and relax, so it's really interesting to think about this place that soldiers could come to, but Andrew Tibs believes that the baths may not have been as hygienic as you might think, so the evidence from places like Pompeii, where the bathhouses are still standing, is the actual area where you bathe. the bathtub, um, they are large areas, they are common areas and one of the problems is that you have a lot of hot, sweaty and dirty people, with mud, Ro soldiers, Pompeii, you have the heat, it's all horrible, disgusting, everyone gets in bathing together um and it doesn't look like there's any way to drain those baths, so there's no plug at all in some of the examples.

Now it varies from bathhouse to bathhouse, but you're talking about people who are dirty and muddy. the soldiers were working long hours they were working very hard they were entering they were oiling themselves they were scraping the dirt passing several pools and then they all sat together in a very communal way and yet the bath water had not been changed for a while While it was not pleasant, Could the soldiers come down and go to their own B? Bathing was absolutely an essential part of Roman life. It was like you knew you needed to feed the soldiers, you needed to give them wine, and you needed to let them come.

The bathhouse is a really key part of being a Roman, staying clean, but also the act of going down, as we talk about socializing, you know, it was a really essential part, a key part of Roman life, a key part of the Roman life, yes, the soldiers would not have been. Happy if they weren't so close to the baths, we also have the remains of one of Chesters other notable structures, so Francis, once again we are standing in a place full of Roman history, yes we have gone down to the river. So you can see the remains of the bridge, the chicken wall crossed 73 miles including quite a few rivers and so it had to cross and here it was on a very impressive looking bridge and I guess we are standing on a fortified end. of this bridge, yeah, so one, um, Edge, a companion would be here and then the archers would cross it and you can see there the remains of Hayden's wall falling and that companion over there, so yeah, and how did it get linked this bridge with him?

Fort right up there, so the wall across the bridge went up and then went in that direction and hit the East Gate, so Chesters is a really interesting idea because half north of the wall and half south of the wall , so this The wall and the bridge combine to cross this formidable River Cross, yes, yes, that's right, so the wall of Haun is at the top of this bridge, so if you imagine that the width and size of Haun's wall would actually have required a fairly large bridge structure to obtain. About how many bridges like these we're talking about along Hen's Wo, there's one here that you can see and you can also go see Willer Ford near Bird Oswald.

There's a really cool bridge there that you can see. The remains of the pier there were really impressive and once again I have so we just hung out in the bars, saw the spring sale in the center of the Fort, saw the walls and the gates and now we have the bridges it really emphasizes how the Romans were masters of engineering, yes, and when people think that Hadrian's Wall is much more than just a wall, isn't it? and everything, yeah, and all just mixed together at the same time, yeah right, let's move on, well, ultimately Chesters was first and foremost a military fort, so most of the fort was accommodation for the troops and their animals .

Well, we have entered the barracks now, we can only see a few barracks, but the fort would have been absolutely full, with them. and Chesters, the barracks here are for a Cavalry unit for Cavalry, yes, if you look at this room for example, it will be divided into two, in the front, three horses, the three men in the back, so they shared a room together , yes, for a long time, archaeologists. They were looking for stables when the new Cavalry unit was based here and they were very confused because they were finding barracks but not stables, but now we know that three horses in the front, three men in the back, I mean, that must have just been thinking about 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 at the end of the walls, the excavations there in their cavalry barracks found urine, um holes, um in the front, um, but yeah, and we think probably the bars are two stories, so maybe the B A Hal is at the top, but you know you'd want your horses to be close to you, they're a valuable asset. and I also assume that means they are safe inside the fort, but yeah, I don't.

I don't know if I would have liked to share a room with these horses and you know it's quite narrow, in fact quite narrow, and this Barracks is shared with the horses and the men in the back, this is repeated throughout, yeah , so you can. If this is not a full barracks, there would have been 32 men in a turma which is a cavalry unit instead of a sentry which is an infantry unit, so we don't have all the rooms here, but you can see 1 2 3 4 five barracks here and there are some more below the field and at the end are the durian quarters, so the decurion is in charge of the C of the turmer while a centurion is in charge of a century in an infantry. unit, but you will see the big difference in the accommodation of the durian compared to the ordinary cavalryman, absolutely let's go see and as we walk over there we say once again we have this line in the middle, a nice drainage here and That's another barracks, so you can see how tight they were.

There was just one line and on the other side there is another line of very full barracks because you have to fit five 500 men and 500 horses into this fort, which is quite tight. so remember this room is for the three men and the three horses together, this is the duan's room if you go into that back wall, so possibly he shared this with his junior officer and possibly they had two horses. each, but it's still a big step forward compared to what we just saw. This is absolutely huge, yes, yes, it's quite luxurious, isn't it, Francis?

What do we know about the Cavalry stationed at Chesters? So the unit here was the second one, all from Aorus, so they are from Atorus in northern Spain, so just one of those units coming from all over the Empire to serve on the wall, just confirms the fact that we have seen in Haun W that all these auxiliary units come. from the farthest corners of the Empire coming to this northwest fringe to serve on this distant frontier, yes, yes, it would be a true mix of different languages, different cultures, all mixed together, so despite its remoteness, the Roman Fort of Chester would have been a cosmopolitan place with connections.

In every part of the Empire, you can also see these connections through the many cults that were preoccupied at the Wall. The Romans worshiped many different gods and were very open to incorporating new gods into their belief system, so there were the classical gods like Mars and Jupiter, but they also faced local gods who were worshiped by the people of the provinces where they lived. began to rule, even in a remote province like Britannia, we see the beliefs of the East being incorporated into this melting pot of religions. belief and this includes cults or religions such as the worship of mithas which originated and was inspired by religions in Persia and also gods such as Isis and carapus of Egypt.

I'm a few miles west of Chesters, the heavens have opened, it's begun. It is raining but I have come to look and take a look at this secluded temple almost in the middle of nowhere this is a mithum it is a temple of mithas found near the Roman fort of Carbra the cult of the myth which is the worship of the bull begins in the Eastern half of the Empire has a large influence on the army, more or less wherever the army goes. The cult of mithras follows the worship of mithas was very popular in Britain, especially among the military, so we get particular concentrations of evidence of worship. both in large centers like York, where the army was based, but also along the border, so at Hadrian's Wall now this was a meter and there are many things that are really interesting about this temple and the first reason is its design, you can see that it is Now they were long, thin temples for Mithas and the people who worshiped Mithas.

Mithas was worshiped in caves in a dark atmosphere in a cave-like atmosphere, so you can imagine that this temple when it was in its complete structure would have been dark. If it had been pretty grim, I would have tried to evoke this cave atmosphere where they worshiped Mithas, so they're trying to replicate the myth of Mythra, where you're the bull, the minur, it's about being underground. in Dark Places, so you would have had all these soldiers coming into this dark, underground Temple quite wet, humid, they would have had statues on the sides and then you have a series of altars.

Now what we have in front of us are the reconstructions of three altars found in this Temple and, as you can see, As you can see today, back then votive offerings would have been placed on these altars for those hoping for good luck in the future, such time and as you can see, this practice has continued to this day and don't forget that these altars would have been painted. it would have been very elaborate it would have been very colorful um very different from what we see today these large blocks of sandstone they are all faded and worn and have no color at all, one of the reasons why the worship of Myas was so popular in The Roman Army is because it was only open to men, it was a societysecret and the activities and rituals carried out during the miraic cult in the temple were closely monitored, which led to the um mithas and similar cults being seen as secret and mysterious. and that's why they are often called Mystery Cults where people would have been initiated into, they were sworn to secrecy, they weren't allowed to tell anyone about the cult itself and what they had to do in the cult and we also know that there were a hierarchy. so to speak, you could progress through the ranks, ascending, ascending higher and higher in the Mithraic order, so to speak, if you completed a series of what they thought were manly tasks, physical or mental tasks that you were on. in danger or danger, and we know that This culture was very popular among the soldiers who lived along Hadrian's Wall and that is one of the reasons why I found it so fascinating.

This eastern cult on the eastern edges of the Roman Empire finds its way to this northwest frontier in Britain and becomes very popular and again, this really emphasizes the interconnected nature of the Roman Empire. For me, this journey along the wall has been truly eye-opening. It has been a privilege to meet some of these historians and archaeologists who have been working on archeology on this Frontier, but for me, there. There are a couple of things that have been really fascinating. The first is that, and as cliché as it may seem, it is that Hadrian's Wall is much more than the wall itself, it is the mile castles, it is the forts, it is the turrets, it is the prosperous nearby settlements, the treasure archaeological.

Troes like Vinder Landa Corbridge and South Shields, but the other key thing is that we are talking about Hadrian's W almost 2,000 years ago since it was first built, but at the same time there are still so many mysteries around it, so many questions What are they. It hasn't been answered yet, but at the same time every year, every two years, we see new groundbreaking archaeological discoveries found on this Frontier that are answering some of these questions. They may answer one question, but a host of new questions arise for the future. excavations to figure out one thing is certain the future of archeology in hadrien wo looks to be very exciting thanks for watching this video on history Visit the YouTube channel, you can subscribe here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films. who are dating or if you are a true history fan, check out our hit special dedicated to the History Channel. you're going to love television