Of Cheese-Presses, Crosses, Castles and RomansWritten in 2007, while I was doing my research.
My PhD work involves collating data from many Roman archaeology sites into one huge database and then running a type of analysis on it that has aspects of New Archaeology, Post-Processualism, and even a bit of Post-Modernism (as if anyone really cares what the theories are called but theory geeks).
Frankly, after a while, one Roman fort gets to be the same as another. It's the little details that make the work bearable; the murder in the vicus, the 4 stone heads arrayed around the fort, two of which are flipping the world off, the really cool insights into 2000 year old individuality. Aspects of the forts can also be exciting, but usually only in a Roman Army freakoid way. Wow, this one had a hospital! And that one was stuffed to the gills with granaries during the Severan expeditions! And this one seems to have been dismantled, down to the nail, by the Romans. Imagine that, being so determined to deny the enemy anything of yours that when you are ordered to transfer to the Continent, you even pull out the goddamned nails and bury them.
So this past week I encountered an old friend, a fort that has delighted me for many years. Bewcastle. Even the name is kinda cool, in a very British way. Bewcastle, above the Kirk Beck and flanked by the Bride's Gill and the Hall Sike, overlooking the lower grazing lands drained by the White Lyne. In Roman times it was connected to Hadrian's Wall at Birdoswald via the Maiden Way. Direct communication was achieved via two signal stations at Barron's Pike and Robin Hood's Butt. Dig the names!
So, along about AD 124 or so, after the area had been explored in the 70s (err that's AD 70, not 1970) and conquered in the 80s, some Roman Army surveyors rode onto the plateau at Bewcastle and decided, although the location didn't have superior command of the countryside, being lower than some of the Fells around it, that it would be a good place to put down a fort. The fort would have command of the easiest crossing of the Kirk Beck, and the plateau was well defended on all sides but the north, which provided easily defended access. One problem was the shape of the plateau, but Romans of that time were nothing if not adaptable, so the traditional 'playing card' fort was fit into a quite radical hexagonal.
The first iteration of the fort was built in timber. This was not unusual for the time. Many of the first phases of the forts of the Hadrian's Wall complex were timberbuilt at first. It does seem to have had, from the beginning, a stone bathhouse and a stone principia (hq). The ramparts were built of timber reinforced turf, mostly cast up from the ditch which was dug before the rampart. There were the usual 4 gates, perhaps they were built of stone from the first as well. This has not been determined with certainty, for Bewcastle is a very crowded place, archaeologically and only one gate has been dug, and that was done almost 70 years ago.
The fort was built by the legions (Legio XX and II to be exact), but occupied at first by a unit called a 'cohors milliaria peditata'. This was a nominally 1000 man strong foot unit. I say nominally, because centuries did not have 100 men in them, they had generally 80 men. The other 20 men were seconded elsewhere long before the system was ossified during the Republic, but the names stuck. The particular cohort seems to have been the First Dacians, or Cohors I Dacorum, according to an inscription found on the site.
Now these guys came from Dacia, which is basically modern Hungry, Romania, and parts thereabout. Probably at the time of their occupying the fort, they were still actually Dacians. Local girls and soldiers being what they are though, soon the Dacians were producing little soldiers of their own, and no more did the men of the unit originate from across the Empire, but the name stuck. In Rome, names tend to stick.
They'd only lived in the fort for about 20 years when a new Emperor ascended the imperial throne. This guy was a good politician, but he was kind of a loser. He'd never really served in the military, and the army was grumbling about his pansy like history. He was sort of a smarter Dubya. Not a difficult feat, if you think about. Although, have to admit, there is no indication that he got a deferrment. He just didn't get lucky enough to serve as a governor of a military provence when rising through the political ranks.
The Caledonians, up there in northern Scotland, offered an excuse for the imperial wimp to prove his manly prowess. So the Dacians left their cosy, albeit strangely shaped, fort and headed north with the rest of the Imperial army in Britain. And they whooped many a Caledonian ass. Shock and awe it was, as they marched through the glens of Scotland, shivering. Somewhere, some woman said, 'Look at those skirts! Look at those masculine legs! Wonder what they got under there?' and a kiltish race memory was planted.
20 (or 40, or 60, depending upon how old the book you are reading is) years or so later, the Romans reduced the number of soldiers in Britain; pulling units away to serve in wars on the Continent. Maybe the Dacians went back to Dacia, because the wimp's successor won a big victory there, and gained the provence of Dacia. Because the lines were now a bit over stretched, or maybe because the Romans decided they really didn't care about the Highlands of Scotland, the army was withdrawn back to the line of Hadrian's wall. The forts were refurbished, and once again Roman soldiers were able to clean up in the baths at Bewcastle. And that's another quirky thing about Bewcastle. The baths are inside the fort walls. Most Roman forts had their baths outside their walls. But no, Bewcastle has to be different.
When the fort was reoccupied, it was rebuilt in stone. Around 200 AD Severus came to the Island and beat the tar out of the Caledonians for one last time. He did such a good job, they never rose again. For over 100 years there was peace on the northern frontier of Britain. The fort continued to be occupied. Down south, along the Saxon Shore, there was some troubles, but they don't seem to have affected the far north. In AD 312 the Emperor Constantine, yes, he of the sign of the cross and conversion to Christianity, came to the Island and rearranged things on the frontier. He needed troops to support his bid to be Emperor, and he got them. Somewhere around this time, or perhaps a bit later, the fort seems to have been abandoned. The bathhouse fell down, after 200 years of faithful service. Perhaps a token force remained, for the fort was reduced drastically in size, and a few sherds of late pottery have been found.
The abandoned fort was left to the elements. Soil filled the empty rooms, covered the little that remained of the soldiers that once lived there; sherds of pottery, a bead here and there, some metal, an intalgio, plaques of silver dedicated to Cocidius, forgotten inscriptions and ruined temples.
New conquerors came to Britain. The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes came as mercenaries attached to the Roman army, or invited by the sub-Roman leaders, or as outright barbarian invaders. Eventually they found their way to Bewcastle. In the ruined bathhouses, a woman lost a loomweight. Some time during this period, Bewcastle became a religious place. An Anglo Saxon monastic grave slab was found on the site of the baths, a cross pecked into its surface. It could date anywhere from the 6th to the 10th C. And someone carved a marvelous cross, and erected it on the plateau, in the middle of the Roman ruins in the 8th C.
The place continued to be holy. It's likely there was a church there from the time of the cross at least, but we know the Medieval church was built on the site in the 13th C. There was a weekly market at Bewcastle at the time, and two annual fairs. The site was an important location in the parish.
In the late 14th C a castle was built in the northwest corner of the strangely shaped Roman fort. It must have been sited to take advantage of walls still standing, albeit in much disrepair. And, of course, it was delightful to built because of the easy source of already prepared stone from the old fort. The castle was used in the 17th C to guard against raids from Liddesdale by the western families of the border reivers.
Once the two countries of Scotland and England were united, Bewcastle finally ceased to be of much importance. A farm was built on the site. In the 18th C and perhaps later it was a public house as well. A visitor in 1754 described Bewcastle as a parish 'in which there is neither town nor village, but a few wretched huts only, which are widely scattered in a desolate country.'
In the 20th C a silage pit was dug on the site. In its wall is a block of well-dressed stone, almost certainly Roman. The farm family had used it, prior to its placement, as a cheese-press.
