Manchester
About
General Agricola's campaigns against the Brigantes brought a turf-and-timber fort to this sandstone bluff above the River Medlock in 79 CE. An auxiliary cohort of roughly 500 infantry garrisoned the post at the junction of roads running to the legionary fortresses at Chester and York and north toward the Stanegate frontier. The original defenses stood through Trajan's reign until a rebuilding around 160 CE. Reconstructed sections of the fort's north gate and walls now stand in Manchester's Castlefield district.
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.
Sources
Nearby
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