Cripplegate Fort
About
A stone-walled 'playing-card' fort in Londinium's northwest corner, roughly 220 by 215 meters, garrisoning about 1,000 troops including the governor's ceremonial guard. Archaeologist W.F. Grimes traced its walls and gates between 1947 and 1968, digging bomb-cleared sites left by the Blitz beneath the modern city; his full records weren't published until Museum of London Archaeology issued them in 2012. Archaeologists date the stone fort to around 120 CE, likely tied to Hadrian's 122 visit to the province. When London's landward city wall was built decades later, it simply absorbed the fort's north and west walls as its own. In 117 Londinium had no fort at all on this site — still an undefended civilian town.
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 →