THE ROMANS IN CHESHIRE. II
A piece of leaden water-piping discovered in Eastgate Street, Chester,
bears the name of Julius Agricola. Agricola was made Governor of Britain
in A.D. 78. Tacitus, a Roman historian, who married Agricola's daughter,
wrote a life of his father-in-law and a narrative of his work in
Britain. From his writings we learn that Agricola first turned his
attention to the fierce tribe of the Brigantes who inhabited the hilly
districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and North-East Cheshire.
Agricola made the preparations for his expedition at Chester, which
became his head-quarters, and built the fortified outposts of Mancunium
on the Irwell and Melandra on the Derbyshire bank of the River Etherow,
connecting them with one another with new roads. Both Mancunium and
Melandra have been excavated in recent years, and at the latter you may
see the foundations of portions of the wall laid bare, and the base of
one of the principal gateways leading into the fort.
A Roman camp was usually square, with the corners slightly rounded, as
has been proved by the excavations at Melandra and by the piece of Roman
wall lately discovered at Chester, which shows a distinct curve towards
the Pepper Gate. Roads crossed the camp at right angles. The wall or
'vallum' was protected when necessary by a fosse or ditch, but Agricola
chose his positions with such care that one side at least was usually
already guarded by the waters of some stream. Watch-towers were placed
at the corners and on either side of the gateways.
Chester still preserves the shape and plan of the Roman fortress. Its
four main streets, which are hewn out of the sandstone on which the
city is built, cross each other at right angles. The Welsh called it
Caer Lleon or Lleon Vawr--the 'Camp of the Legion'. The present walls
are not, however, the work of the Romans, though here and there they
have been proved to have been built on the foundations of the Roman
walls. The lowest courses of the North Wall near the Deanery Field, when
excavated, were found to be faced with massive stones of Roman masonry,
with a Roman 'plinth' running along the base. The stones fit very
closely together and no mortar was used. The inside of the wall was
filled with rubble.
From time to time portions of Roman wall have been found in other parts
of the city. One big piece is in the cellars of Dickson's seed
warehouse. When the foundations of the offices of the National Telephone
Company in John Street were being excavated a year or two ago, a fine
piece of Roman wall was unearthed. The builders have left it standing
where they found it, and you may now see it in the basement of the
building, protected from future harm by an iron grid.
On the Roodee is a portion of Roman masonry of finely jointed stones
which is thought to have been the quay of the Roman city.
In the middle of a Roman fortress was the Praetorium or general's
quarters. Traces of such a building are to be seen in the camp at
Melandra, and at Chester the foundations of a large edifice discovered
in Northgate Street may possibly be a portion of a similar building.
Inscriptions show us that another legion, called the Legio Secunda, was
stationed at Chester for several years. When Britain was more or less
pacified and required fewer troops this legion was recalled and sent to
the Roman provinces on the Danube.
Tacitus tells us that Agricola spread civilization among the Britons,
sent the sons of chieftains to Rome to be educated, and even in time
taught the Britons to adopt Roman habits and dress and to speak the
Latin tongue. But he would not at first let them join the Roman legions
in Britain; those who wished to fight for the Roman emperors were sent
abroad to the Roman provinces on the Rhine or the Danube.
The soldiers of subject races were not for many years after their
conquest allowed by the Romans to fight in their own country. The
tombstones mentioned in the previous chapter prove this, for not one of
them bears the name of any British soldier. A bronze tablet dug up at
Malpas, on which is engraved a decree of the Emperor Trajan, shows that
the soldiers who fought in the Roman army in Britain were not all
Romans, or even Italians, for it speaks of Thracians, Dalmatians,
Spaniards, and men of other nations conquered by Rome.
For seven years Agricola was a wise and a humane ruler. He removed many
of the burdens put upon the Britons by previous governors, and it was
chiefly due to him that the Romans were able to make their rule
acceptable to the Britons. In time Britons became proud of the name of
Roman citizens.
We have seen from the character of the remains that Chester was
peculiarly a military city. Thus it differed greatly from many of the
Roman cities of southern Britain, which lost their military character as
the tide of war rolled northwards and westwards. These cities soon
became busy centres of trade and civic life, with all the conveniences
and luxuries of Italian towns. They had their temples and their basilica
or town hall, theatres and public baths, palaces and colonnades of
shops, and handsome villas of Roman officials. But life at Chester, with
the continual arrival and departure of troops and stores, must have been
hard and monotonous, with the din of warfare probably never far distant.
The Welsh were never really subdued by the Romans.
Yet even at Chester there were buildings of importance, as we can see
from the broken fragments of pillars in the little garden by the Water
Tower, and in the basements of Vernon's Toy Bazaar and other shops in
Chester.
These pillars were made to support the porches and colonnades with which
the fronts and sometimes the sides also of Roman buildings were adorned.
No doubt you have noticed them in pictures you have seen of ancient
Rome. In a later chapter you will learn that the Englishmen of the
eighteenth century copied the Roman or Italian style of architecture in
their churches, town halls, and other public buildings, and from the
buildings then made you can get some idea of those of a Roman town.
The pillars were of three different patterns or 'orders', and by
observing carefully their differences you will be able to tell at a
glance to which particular order a modern building belongs. The capitals
of the Doric and Ionic pillars are much simpler in design than those of
the Corinthian, which were often of a very ornamental nature.
[Illustration: ROMAN CAPITALS: DORIC, IONIC, AND CORINTHIAN]
The Romans felt the cold and damp of the British climate, so different
from that of their own warm and sunny land. Many of their houses and
public buildings were warmed by 'hypocausts' or heating chambers, and
every city had its public baths with rooms heated by hot air. In Bridge
Street is a hypocaust remaining just where the Romans left it. The
pillars which you see in the illustration are those of another hypocaust
found many years ago in Bridge Street.
The pillars were set up in rows on a solid foundation, being fixed in
their places by cement. On the top of these a second floor of cement and
bricks, several inches thick, was laid. The space between the two floors
was heated by hot air, introduced through an opening in the side wall
communicating with a furnace or oven. In their own country the bath was
an important event in the everyday life of the Romans.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF HYPOCAUST, CHESTER]
The floors of Roman buildings were paved with tiny blocks of brick
called 'tesserae', three to four inches long and one inch wide. A piece
of flooring in the Grosvenor Museum shows that the bricks were laid on a
bed of cement or concrete in 'herring-bone' pattern, that is, with the
bricks at right angles to one another. A large number of tiles used in
roofing have been found all over the city; on many of these you will
see the stamp LEG XX VV of the Twentieth Legion. There was a tile
factory at Holt on the Dee where also many of these tiles bearing the
same stamp have recently been found.
The Romans taught the Britons many useful trades. 'Veratinum' or
Wilderspool became under the Romans quite a busy manufacturing town, the
forerunner of a modern Warrington or Wigan. The site of the ancient
Roman town has been carefully dug over. Traces have been found of many
pits, hearths, furnaces, and ovens for the manufacture of glass and
pottery, a bronze foundry, and an iron smelting furnace, and an
enameller's workshop. In the museums at Warrington and at Stockport are
many fragments of pottery found here. Most of it is of a rough brown-red
ware, called 'rough-cast', of which the commoner utensils, water-jugs
and bowls and funeral urns, were made. A more ornamental kind is called
'Samian', and is of a darker colour, highly glazed and decorated with
embossed figures of men and animals. Many articles of iron, knives,
padlocks, keys, nails, found on the same spot show that Veratinum was
the Birmingham of the Roman occupation.
Roman coins have been dug up in large numbers at Chester and other sites
along the Roman roads. Many of them are to be seen in Chester Town Hall
and in our museums. Nearly all the emperors of the first four centuries
are represented upon them. Several emperors came to Britain, and we may
be sure that in their tours of inspection they paid visits to the
important garrison city of the 'great legion'.
Some of these coins bear the name of Constantine, the first Christian
emperor, who was born at York, and whose mother was perhaps a lady of
British birth. There is unfortunately nothing to show that there was any
Christian church in Roman Cheshire, though many of the Roman soldiers
must have been familiar with the Christian faith. Romans who became
Christians were allowed to worship in the basilica, which in after days,
as we shall see, became the model upon which Christian churches were
built.
On a house near the East Gate of Chester are carved these words: 'The
fear of the Lord is a fountain of life.' This is the translation of an
inscription on a Roman coin found when the workmen were digging the
foundations of the building. The coins of the Emperor Magnentius show
the monogram of the first two letters of Christ.
The Roman rule lasted for 370 years. During this period they had
transformed a desolate and barren land, inhabited by a people that were
almost savages, into a fertile and prosperous province; Britannia Felix
the Romans themselves called it. Large tracts of forest land were
cleared and brought under cultivation. Britain became one of the chief
granaries of Rome. In the museums you may see the Roman querns or
handmills with which they ground their corn.
The Romans worked the copper mines on Alderley Edge; stone hammer-heads
with which the Britons crushed the ore for their Roman masters have been
found there. A 'pig' of lead weighing over a hundredweight, dug up in
the Roodee, shows that lead mines were extensively worked. The lead was
brought to Chester from the mines of Denbighshire and was part of the
tribute paid by the Britons to the Roman emperors. Salt, a scarce
commodity in many countries, was obtained, as at the present day, from
the salt beds of Northwich.
At the end of the fourth century the Roman empire was overrun by hordes
of barbarians from Northern Europe. The Romans, weakened by luxury and
wealth, were unable to beat back the ruthless invaders. Legion after
legion was summoned from the distant parts of the empire for the defence
of the imperial city itself. About the year A.D. 380 the 'Conquering
Legion' marched out for the last time through the city gates of Chester,
and by 410 no Roman soldiers were left in Britain.
With sorrow and despair the Britons watched the last soldiers depart.
Their own fighting-men were far away in distant lands, and they knew
that without the protection of the Roman legions on whom they had so
long relied, they were left a defenceless prey of the foes that were
threatening them on all sides.