← Back to the map Excavated remains of the Roman fort at Vindolanda, northern England

Modern photograph (geograph.org.uk) of Vindolanda Roman fort · Wikimedia Commons

Vindolanda

Name: Vindolanda
Address: United Kingdom

Britannia · Roman province·United Kingdom·Founded 85 CE

Auxiliary fort south of what became Hadrian's Wall. The wooden Vindolanda tablets — Rome's oldest written documents from Britain — come from around our snapshot.

An uninhabited Roman fort site near Hexham, England, on Hadrian's Wall's UNESCO frontier, and still an active dig with volunteer excavations every summer.

Excavation history

1967

Robin Birley — Robin Birley began directing excavations at Vindolanda around 1967, a role he held for nearly 50 years until handing over to his son Andrew in 2015.

1973

Robin Birley — In March 1973 Birley's team found the first Vindolanda writing tablets — two thin fragments of wood stuck together — in a deep, waterlogged trench, initially mistaken for wood shavings.

1974-1975

Robin Birley's team — Further excavation brought the tablet total to over 200 fragments; the corpus has since grown to more than 1,600 as excavation of the site continued.

Notable finds

Vindolanda Tablet 291 (Birthday Invitation)

Claudia Severa wrote this wooden tablet to Sulpicia Lepidina around 100 CE, inviting her to a birthday party, then added a closing line in her own hand — the earliest known Latin writing by a woman.

British Museum

Vindolanda leather shoe collection

The fort's waterlogged, oxygen-starved soil preserved thousands of leather shoes, from hobnailed army boots to children's sandals, one of the largest collections of Roman footwear ever found.

Vindolanda Museum, Chesterholm

Vindolanda boxing gloves

Excavators found two leather boxing gloves on a cavalry barrack floor in 2017, each cut from a single piece of leather and stuffed for padding — the only surviving examples from the Roman world.

British Museum, with examples also on display at Vindolanda

Vindolanda moss hairpiece

Woven from hair moss, a springy local plant with long red fibers, this cap-like hairpiece let loose strands fall around the face and ranks among the more unusual finds from the fort's textile collection, the largest in western Europe.

Vindolanda Museum / Roman Army Museum collection

Open Vindolanda on the interactive map →

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 →