Wroxeter Roman City

The Roman City of Wroxeter is located five miles southeast of Shrewsbury in the March of Wales. Known as Viroconium and initially established as a fort over a native settlement, Wroxeter became the fourth largest city in Britain with a population of up to 15,000 people. Wroxeter was built at the end of Watling Street, the main Roman road that ran from Dover, through London and across much of Britain.The site was initially established as a jumping off point for the Roman invasion of Wales. Once Wales was conquered, the fort was abandoned by the military and taken over by the civilian population that had settled around it. After the departure of the Romans, Wroxeter continued to be inhabited. In 1967, excavation uncovered the ‘Wroxeter stone’ written in ‘partially Latinized primitive Irish’ and dated to the 5th century when the Read more…

Housesteads Roman Fort

Housesteads Roman Fort is located midway along Hadrian’s Wall in northern England. One name for it is Vercovicium. The fort is one of fifteen built along Hadrian’s Wall and the most complete example of a Roman fort in Britain. It was built within the first decade after the wall was begun in 122 and was garrisoned by 800 men until the 4th century AD. The men who manned the fort were Roman auxiliary forces, composed of infantry and cavalry raised from the conquered peoples of the empire. Still visible today are the remains of the walls, barracks, hospital, and the best preserved stone latrines in Roman Britain. Note the absence of running water. Housesteads was completely dependent upon rainwater for its supply. Housesteads does not relate directly to my books, but when Meg time travels to Hadrian’s Wall, she lands Read more…

St. Mary’s in Castro (Saxon Church at Dover)

We talked about Dover Castle last season, but it’s worth revisiting, in large part for the same reason we devoted a video to it before: the long history of occupation. Specifically, in regards to the Saxons, Dover was one of the first places William the Conqueror conquered—and thankfully, he left the original Saxon church intact for us to visit to this day and, according to English Heritage, is the ‘largest and finest Saxon building in Kent’. The first record of the church at Dover is around 630 AD, when the records talk about a church built within the castle, which is where it gets its name Saint Mary in Castro. This is in the time of Eadbald, son of Æthelberht, the first Saxon king to convert to Christianity. Credence is given to the idea that the structure we see today Read more…

Roman Religion in Britain

Question: There’s been a lot written about Roman religion. What’s different about it in Britain? While you’re right that the Roman religion is something we know a lot about, it didn’t just get transplanted to Britain whole cloth and didn’t look in Britain the same as what it looked like in Rome. The reason for this is that the Romans who conquered Britain were almost exclusively male, they were members of the Roman army, and many were not actually Roman by birth. This shaped which gods and goddesses they focused on in their worship. Secondly, as I mentioned in an earlier video, the Celtic religion syncretized to some degree with the Roman, in part because the Romans worked so hard to eliminate the druids and native religious beliefs. By the end of the first century AD, as far as the Read more…

Celtic Religion

Our understanding of Celtic religion is at times a long the lines of educated guesses. Like the people living in Britain prior to 800 BC, the Celts had no written language. This makes it obviously very difficult for us to develop a clear understanding of their religious beliefs. What we do have is the writings of the Romans who conquered them, which in itself is problematic because, when victors write history, invariably they are writing from a position of their own magnificence, and by definition are seeking to downplay and barbarize the achievements and culture of those they conquered. Scholars do think there was a basic religious homogeneity among the Celts, with significant regional differences, especially since they were spread out across Europe from Czechoslovakia to Ireland. Like the Romans who came to Britain after them, the Celts were polytheists, Read more…

Hadrian’s Wall

Hadrian’s Wall “was a defensive fortification in the Roman province of Britannia, begun in 122 AD in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. It ran from the banks of the River Tyne near the North Sea to the Solway Firth on the Irish Sea, and was the northern limit of the Roman Empire. It had a stone base and a stone wall. There were milecastles with two turrets in between. There was a fort about every five Roman miles. From north to south, the wall comprised a ditch, wall, military way and vallum, another ditch with adjoining mounds. It is thought that the milecastles were staffed with static garrisons, whereas the forts had fighting garrisons of infantry and cavalry. In addition to the wall’s defensive military role, its gates may have been used as customs posts.[1] A significant portion of Read more…

Boudicca’s Revolt

The Romans conquered Britain over the course of one hundred and fifty years.  Julius Caesar was the first to attempt it.  He established a beachhead in the east, but never got further into the country despite multiple expeditions. “His first expedition, however, was ill-conceived and too hastily organised. With just two legions, he failed to do much more than force his way ashore at Deal and win a token victory that impressed the senate in Rome more than it did the tribesmen of Britain. In 54 BC, he tried again, this time with five legions, and succeeded in re-establishing Commius on the Atrebatic throne. Yet he returned to Gaul disgruntled and empty-handed, complaining in a letter to Cicero that there was no silver or booty to be found in Britain after all.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/questions_01.shtml 100 years later, in 43 AD, the Emperor Claudius determined Read more…

The Eagle (movie review)

At last!  At long last!  A movie set in Roman Britain that I really quite liked! Though …  I just looked The Eagle up on the tomato-meter which gives this movie a 39.  Wow. I thought it was way better than that and here’s why: 1)  The book.  The Eagle of the Ninth is a wonderful book by Rosemary Sutcliffe.  It was one of my mother’s favorite books and she gave it to me to read in one of those old hardback editions with fraying edges.  A story of a son trying to redeem his family’s honor after his father led the Ninth Legion to their doom in Scotland.  Great stuff.  The movie follows the book plot better than you might expect. 2)  The beginning.  It drew me in.  I felt for this guy.  I wanted to find out what Read more…

The Evolution of Welsh

The first thing you learn in linguistics is that languages evolve.  The second is that they are arbitrary.   This does not mean language isn’t important, or that it isn’t integral to culture. (see this article on Quebec’s policing of language).  It does mean that there is nothing inherent in the word ‘spoon’ that denotes the rounded tool with which you cook or eat. Medieval Welsh, or Middle Welsh, was the language spoken in the 12th to 14th centuries.  Like when a modern English-speaker attempts to read Chaucer in English, it is possible for a modern Welsh speaker to read middle Welsh, which is the language of much of the Welsh literature (Four Tales of the Mabinogi, for example) that we have, although the tales themselves are much older.  You can find out about learning it here: http://www.celt.dias.ie/publications/cat/cat_h.html#H.2 The root of the changes between medieval and modern Welsh lie in Read more…

Celebrating the New Year in medieval Wales

Celebrating the New Year dates back to Babylon, 4000 years ago.  The date was celebrated on March 23, which coincides with the Persian, Muslim, and Baha’i New Year at the Spring Solstice. “The Romans continued to observe the new year on March 25, but their calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun. In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year. But tampering continued until Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, established what was come to be known as the Julian Calendar. It again established January 1 as the new year. But in order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days. Read more…

Did Medieval People Bathe?

One of the most interesting scenes in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (see my review:  https://sarahwoodbury.com/robin-hood-review-spoilers/) is when Robin first arrives at Marian’s house and she sends him to the bath room. It’s a room off the kitchen, devoted to bathing and laundry. I LOVED to see that scene because it was one of the few times that medieval bathing was openly acknowledged in film. “Contrary to popular legend, medieval man loved baths. People probably bathed more than they did in the 19th century, says the great medievalist Lynn Thorndike. Some castles had a special room beside the kitchen where the ladies might bathe sociably in parties. Hot water, sometimes with perfume or rose leaves, was brought to the lord in the bedchamber and poured into a tub shaped like a half-barrel and containing a stool, so that the occupant could Read more…