Listed 7 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "SHROPSHIRE County ENGLAND" .
WROXETER (Town) ENGLAND
Viroconium Cornoviorum (Wroxeter) Shropshire, England.
Roman site on the Severn, dominated by the Wrekin hill 3 km away.
On the crest of the hill is the Iron Age fortress of the local chieftains, and
a large Roman fort and several marching camps lie near its foot.
Apart from the conquest of the local Cornovii, the Roman army was
mainly concerned in the mid 1st c. with the tribes of Wales under Caratacus, and
later with the reduction of the whole of Wales. Wroxeter was strategically situated
for this purpose, at the point where the Severn emerges from the Welsh foothills.
The earliest occupation was probably ca. A.D. 50 under Ostorius Scapula; a little
later Legio XIV was moved here, and remained until replaced in 69 by Legio XX
from Gloucester. Tombstones from the military cemetery to the N, identifying both
legions, are now in Rowley House Museum, Shrewsbury, with other material from
Viroconium.
Aerial surveys have shown a number of military sites in the area including
large march camps and large and small permanent forts. Excavations in the baths
insula have uncovered military structures of several phases: evidently successive
legionary fortresses lie buried under the later city. The army remained until
ca. 90, although Legio XX had moved to a new base at Inchtuthil in Scotland. This
fortress was never finished and apparently part of the Wroxeter unit, perhaps
the administrative staff, did not move. But Wroxeter had now ceased to have much
strategical significance; and the Viroconium site passed into civil hands and
became one of the largest and most prosperous cities of Roman Britain.
Below the forum, a bath of a large and elaborate type was discovered,
built at the end of the 1st c. when the town was first laid out, but it was never
completed. In ca. 120 a forum was erected. This has been precisely dated by the
finely cut inscription found in scattered fragments: the building was dedicated
in A.D. 129, in the reign of the emperor Hadrian and under the auspices of the
Civitas Cornovii. The forum was a large open market, surrounded by shops and a
great aisled basilica for public assemblies and the law court. Attached to the
rear were the administrative offices. Excavations in 1923 below the
forum uncovered the 1st c. bath already mentioned.
In 1912-14 excavations on the W side of the main N-S road S of the
forum disclosed simple rectangular shops of the early 2d c., which had been replaced
after a fire ca. 155 by more substantial and complicated structures. These included
a temple, which may have had a priests' house and a sacred enclosure at the rear.
Outside the forum stood the bath, and beneath it an earlier and unfinished building
of uncertain purpose. The bath was not finished until the second half of the 2d
c.; by the early 3d c. an additional suite was added, and the original piscina
no longer used. Early in the 4th c. use of the baths ceased. Aerial reconnaissance
has recovered an almost complete street plan, and has identified houses and temples.
The end of Viroconium is puzzling. At one time it was thought that
the Saxons took the city by storm and burnt it to the ground (skeletons found
in the bath were cited as evidence), but excavation has produced no destruction
layer. A tombstone found in 1967 in ploughing bears an inscription to Cunorix.
The use of the word macvs for "son of" is an Irish form and dates the
stone to the late 5th c. or later. Probably the man was an Irish mercenary employed
by the citizens to protect them from wandering bands of brigands. At some time
in the 6th or 7th c., however, the town was abandoned by all but a small community.
G. Webster, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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