Exeter
About
The Second Augustan Legion built this 42-acre fortress around 55 CE, making it their main base in southwest Britain for two decades. Roughly 5,000 legionaries garrisoned the site before marching away around 75 CE to found a new fortress at Caerleon in Wales. Its enormous legionary bathhouse, one of the largest Roman buildings ever raised in Britain, was demolished to make way for a forum and basilica once the army left. By 117 CE the site had been a thriving civilian tribal capital for four decades, with no trace of its military origins visible above ground.
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 →