Housesteads Roman Fort

History

The fort, known to the Romans as Vercovicium, was built shortly after work began on Hadrian's Wall in AD 122, and housed an auxiliary infantry unit for approximately 280 years. Excavation began in earnest in the nineteenth century and continued through the twentieth, uncovering one of the clearest pictures of daily life on the Roman frontier anywhere in Britain.

Architecture

The fort follows the standard rectangular shape of Roman military architecture, with a full internal layout of barrack blocks, granaries and a commanding officer's house still visible in outline.

Worth knowing

Housesteads holds the best-preserved communal Roman latrines in Britain, a long stone bench pierced with seat-holes that once ran with water from a header tank. The nearby fort of Vindolanda, a short walk away, has yielded the famous Vindolanda writing tablets, some of the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain.