Caersws

Auxiliary FortBritannia · Caersws, Powys, WalesBuilt 78 CE

About

A campaign camp here gave way around 78 CE to a permanent square fort at the junction of five Roman roads in mid-Wales. Its garrison watched over the upper Severn valley through Trajan's reign, even as the surrounding civilian settlement began shrinking in the early second century. Some Roman administrative presence may have lingered here into the fourth century, unusually late for a fort so far from the frontier. Little stands above ground today, but excavation has traced two successive forts on the site.

What happened here

Five hundred men, sometimes a thousand, recruited from a province rather than from citizens, and often stationed a long way from where they were raised. Cavalry units get a bigger fort and far more stabling; the smell tells you which kind you are in before the plan does. The layout copies a legionary fortress at a quarter of the size — headquarters, commander's house, granaries, barracks, a bath house usually built outside the walls because of the fire risk. Duties are patrolling, escorting, customs, and policing rather than pitched battle. After twenty-five years a man is discharged with citizenship for himself and his children, recorded on a bronze diploma he keeps for life. A village grows outside the gate within a decade.