Exeter

Isca Dumnoniorum

FortBritannia · Exeter, Devon, EnglandBuilt 55 CE · Destroyed 75 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

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.