Duncan's Gate, Colchester
About
Duncan's Gate pierced the northeastern stretch of Colchester's new town wall, one of six gateways built into the circuit after the Boudican revolt. Unlike the grand Balkerne Gate, this was a modest single-arched entrance with a small guardroom above it, built from the same rubble as the rest of the wall in the decades after 60-61 CE. It had stood as a working gate for roughly 50 years by the time Trajan died in August 117 CE, and survives today, rediscovered in 1853, as one of only two Roman gates in Colchester still visible above ground.
What happened here
The gate is where a town shows itself and where it counts what comes in. Traffic is funnelled between towers into arched passages — the wide ones for carts, the narrow ones for people — and closed at night with timber leaves shod in iron. A customs post takes duty on goods; a clerk records what passes. The outward face is the decorated one, with an inscription naming the emperor and the town, because this is the first thing a visitor reads. Guards are usually the town's own watchmen rather than soldiers. Just outside, the tombs begin; just inside, the shops. In a town whose walls have long stopped mattering militarily, the gate is kept up anyway, for the look of the thing.
Sources
Nearby
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →