Tuna
Saturday 15 June 2019
When in Rome, visit a roman fort. Today we visited another roman fort, Vindolanda.
Vindolanda is another one of the massive roman forts in this part of the country. The first fort was built of wood in around the middle of the first century and there have been nine different forts built on the same site. The fort you see at Vindolanda now is roughly 4th century and is also an active dig site. The fort is the same configuration as that at Chesters and Housesteads, central buildings for the commanding officer, storage (for gold and food) and rows of barracks for the soldiers, their stuff and horses. Outside the fort walls was the village which normally included a bath house. It all gets a bit the same, but it is still quite amazing to see stuff this old. What was excellent here was an extensive museum showing recovered artefacts including tablets used for basic correspondence such as business deals, birthday invites and thank you letters for socks.
After lunch we headed out to Birdoswald Roman Fort, previously known as Banna. Another classically laid out roman fort, but they haven’t excavated much of it. It is called Birdoswald as that was the landowner in the 13th century, who named for his nephew. When his nephew inherited the property, he promptly sold it.
Last stop for the day was the Roman Army Museum. This was really easy for us as it is across the road from our accommodation. I quite enjoyed the museum as it explained the roman empire, the expansion but then also explained why the romans left and gave a more human aspect to everyday life of a Roman soldier.
As it was a lovely evening we went for a stroll down the road to watch the sunset and look at The Wall.
