Wroxeter

Viroconium Cornoviorum

FortBritannia · Wroxeter, Shropshire, EnglandBuilt 60 CE · Destroyed 90 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

The Fourteenth Legion built a fortress here around 60 CE at a strategic crossing of the River Severn, later handed over to the Twentieth Legion around 66 CE. The base was downgraded to a supply depot in the late 70s before the army abandoned it entirely around 90 CE, transferring its garrison to a new fortress at Chester. Wroxeter then grew into the fourth-largest city in Roman Britain, tribal capital of the Cornovii. By 117 CE the old legionary defenses had been gone for a generation, replaced by a forum, bathhouse and civilian streets.

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.