Housesteads Roman Fort

About this place

Housesteads Roman Fort sits on a ridge above Bardon Mill in Northumberland, on the line of Hadrian's Wall.

It is the most complete Roman fort in Britain, with the stone outlines of barracks, granaries and a hospital still traceable across the hillside.

English Heritage cares for the site, though the land itself belongs to the National Trust.

Visitors can walk the wall itself from here, with sweeping views over the surrounding moorland.

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.