[Photos] UK 35 - Cilurnum I (Chesters Roman Fort)

[moonvoice]

Hadrian's Wall was very much on Glen's bucket list of places to visit, and as he really had a very stripped down list, I had to make sure it would happen. As it was, it sort of happened in the middle of a lot of driving (from Aberdeen down to Carlisle), and we were aware on the day that it might not be possible.

But it turned out to be a really good break, honestly, and it was only forty minutes away from the Premier Inn we ended up staying at.

I know we could have gone to like, 'just a section of wall' but I thought it would be good to find an actual site and museum for Glen, so he could get a better sense of the experience. So I landed on Cilurnum, built in 123 AD.

I was very tired at this point (tbh everything from Inverness onwards, was a continuing theme of precipitously heightening exhaustion), and I honestly spent most of the time either slowly meandering (I never got to Hadrian's Wall, it was too far a walk), or sitting down, contemplating how much more I could do if I had a wheelchair (something I have come to contemplate a lot more since). I would have skipped the museum entirely if Glen hadn't come out to show me the photos of the interior, and I realised I would regret not having a look.

But for now, the exterior. It's all a bit out of order, and I haven't written down the names of what every location was, but basically was a Roman fort, and the best preversed Roman cavalry fort along Hadrian's Wall. It started off for cavalry and later became given to infantry.

Hilariously, the whole thing was buried because the rich twat that used to own the land wanted a smooth and uninterrupted view down to the river. His son then became an archaeologist, and in a giant fuck you to his father, unburied the entire thing when he inherited the estate.


A tiny Glen waving in the distance.




I was kind of fascinated at how much access the public had. Nothing was gated off in the sense that like, children could run along the Roman walls if they wanted. I sat on one, at one point, in sheer exhaustion (if you're not going to provide actual seating, what else do you want your visitors to sit on? The site wasn't tiny.)



I do know this was part of the extended bathhouse, which apparently had many more features than many other bathhouses around this area.





Bathhouse, continued.







Walking down into the bathhouse. (At this point I stared at the slope like 'I'm going to have to walk back up this' and I don't want to describe my efforts around this entire place as Herculean but...yeah).





Also bathhouse.







Glen and Silvia in the distance. I was always pretty far behind them.





Horse on the property.

Comments

[cmcmck]

What amazes me about the wall is how it kicks the racists who say that things were not always thus- things like the grave of a Syrian merchant and his local wife and those of the north African soldiers.

[moonvoice]

YES. Every time someone is like 'er only white people existed in these parts of history' it's like 'yeah no, you're so wrong and so racist and look here is PROOF.'

[silverjackal]

Everywhere the Romans went they left bath houses I think (and rude graffiti). This is a particularly nice example, though. Thank you for sharing it.

[moonvoice]

Heh, it's so nice to know about the rude graffiti :D I've seen some examples (thanks Tumblr) and they're always great.

[silverjackal]

It's practically a rule of Roman engineering -- build incredible structures designed to stand for millennia, and promptly have some bored legionaries come along and scribble phallusses on them. Or things like "I screwed the barmaid" or "I wrote this!" or "I had a good shit here". It ties to the whole "lamenting the Instagram generation" theme. People have *always* been people, and in the case of the Romans they were literate about it. :D (It's beside the point but I was just recalling a phrase from my ancient Greek classes. Someone had scrawled a bit of graffiti which, when translated, read "Hold my coat somebody while I hit Bopholos in the eye". Three millennia later and it's still "Hold my beer...")