Cirencester

Corinium Dobunnorum

FortBritannia · Cirencester, Gloucestershire, EnglandBuilt 45 CE · Destroyed 75 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

A Roman fort was planted here in the mid-40s CE, within a year or two of the invasion, at the point where the Fosse Way frontier road crossed the River Churn. The army evacuated the fort by 70 CE as the conquest pushed further north and west, and the site converted fully to civilian use within a few years afterward. What had been a military outpost grew into the tribal capital of the Dobunni and eventually the second-largest walled town in Roman Britain. By 117 CE the old fort had been gone for over forty years, its ramparts long since built over by streets and houses.

What happened here

A legionary fortress holds five thousand men and is laid out to the same plan everywhere, so a transferred soldier knows his way around on the first day. Two main streets cross at the headquarters building, where the standards and the pay chest are kept in a sunken strongroom under guard. Around it: the commander's house with a courtyard garden, granaries raised on stone piers, a hospital, workshops, and long barrack blocks divided into rooms for eight men who cook and mess together. Training is daily, and building work is constant — soldiers make their own bricks, tiles and boots. A civilian town grows against the walls, with bars, traders and the unofficial families of men who are not legally allowed to marry.