Throp Fortlet

Fortlet ad Throp

Auxiliary FortBritannia · Upper Denton, Cumbria, EnglandBuilt 105 CE

About

Throp's fortlet sat on a spur above the Poltross Burn, its square turf-and-stone ramparts enclosing barely a quarter of a hectare. Like its sister post at Haltwhistle Burn, its whole purpose was watching a single river crossing on the Stanegate road, decades before Hadrian's Wall's own milecastles took over the job a few hundred meters to the north. F. G. Simpson excavated the fortlet for the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society in 1910, uncovering timber gateways and a paved interior. Pottery from the dig showed it was first garrisoned during the building of Hadrian's Wall, then briefly reoccupied in the 4th century.

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.