Hod Hill
About
Roman troops stormed this Iron Age hillfort around 43 to 44 CE, and ballista bolts found embedded near a chieftain's roundhouse still mark where the garrison targeted their commander during the assault. The army then built its own fort in the hillfort's northwest corner, reusing the earlier ramparts to save labor. That garrison marched out again by 51 CE as the frontier moved west into Somerset and Dorset's interior. By 117 CE the site had stood empty of Roman soldiers for over sixty years, though its massive earthworks remain among the best-preserved in Britain.
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.
Sources
Nearby
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 →