Binchester, County Durham
First screened 13 January 2008

Street of the dead

Binchester Roman fort, near Bishop Auckland, was one of the largest and longest permanently occupied Roman forts in the north of England. Binchester, or Vinovia as it was called, was a key staging post on Dere Street, the road to Hadrian's Wall and the north.

  The remains have long been of interest to historians and travellers. In the 16th century John Leyland wrote of 'Romaine coynes and other many tokens of Antiquite' found in nearby ploughed fields and William Camden referred to 'heapes of rubbish, and the reliques of walls yet to be seene [and] peeces of Romane Coine often digged up there, which they call Binchester penies'.

A bath house was discovered on the site in the early 19th century, when a farm cart fell into the hypocaust, and since then excavations have revealed much about life inside the fort. We know who built it – the Sixth Legion Victrix – and when – about 79 AD. We also know the identities of some of the people who lived there during the next 340 years of military occupation – from the Ala Hispanorum Vettonum, a cavalry unit originally from central Spain, to individuals such as Pomponius Donatus, a soldier attached to the governor's staff, and Marcus Aurelius, a doctor.

  All these people, up to 1,000 men at any one time, needed feeding, clothing and entertaining; and for that they relied on the people beyond the fort's imposing walls – the farmers, weavers, brewers, potters, blacksmiths, shopkeepers and traders of every kind. These were the men and women of the vicus, the civilian settlement that grew up to meet the various needs of the Roman army.

  We know there was a vicus at Vinovia thanks to the work of the Reverend R E Hooppell, a late 19th-century antiquarian, who unearthed tantalising evidence of settlement along Dere Street to the south east of the fort. This included substantial stone-built strip houses and a large circular bath house. Geophysics surveys have confirmed the existence of densely packed buildings in this area, which is a scheduled ancient monument, while aerial photographs show what could be another road as well as a curious double ditch feature to the north of the fort.

  Reverend Hooppell called his book on Binchester Vinovia: A buried Roman city. Was this just antiquarian over enthusiasm? What lies beneath the quiet pasture that surrounds the fort today? Time Team set out to find out.

<< Binchester home :Previous    Next: What they found >>