Fortlet ad Haltwhistle Burn
About
This small fortlet guarded the crossing where the Stanegate road forded Haltwhistle Burn, holding a single century of about eighty men behind an earth rampart with a stone face. It was one of the first fortlets built anywhere in Roman Britain, part of a new tactic of splitting garrisons into small posts to watch the frontier road closely.
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
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 →