Holt Legionary Works-Depot
About
Soldiers of the Twentieth Legion Valeria Victrix built an entire industrial works-depot on the River Dee, seven miles from their fortress at Chester, complete with kilns, barracks and a bathhouse for the men stationed there. They fired both pottery and the legion's own stamped roof tiles here through the Trajanic and Hadrianic years, supplying material for the fortress itself. Excavations in the 1920s uncovered one of the most complete legionary production sites found anywhere in Roman Britain.
What happened here
The workshop runs as a production line. Clay is dug locally, weathered over winter, kneaded and thrown, or pressed into moulds for the decorated wares. Vessels are dried under cover, stamped with the potter's name, stacked in the kiln around a central flue and fired for days with the temperature judged by eye and by test pieces pulled from a port in the side. A big firing holds tens of thousands of pots and a bad one loses the lot. Wasters are dumped in heaps beside the works. Some workshops export across half the empire and their stamps turn up thousands of miles away. Fuel is the limit on everything, so kilns sit near woodland and move when it runs out.
Sources
Nearby
%20-%20geograph.org.uk%20-%202487166.jpg?width=800)
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 →