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Almost 2,000 years ago, Viroconium Cornoviorum – known to us as Wroxeter – was the fourth-largest public city in Roman Britain, equivalent in area to Pompeii. The Shropshire site has played an influential role in the study of urbanism in the Roman period since the first excavations took place there in the 1850s (see CA 338 for a summary of past investigations). The modern village, which lies 7.5km (4.7 miles) south-east of Shrewsbury, sits within the walls of the long-since abandoned Roman city, today a Scheduled Monument whose visible remains – which consist of its ramparts, as well as the exposed ruins of its public baths and a reconstructed townhouse – are cared for as a visitor attraction managed by English Heritage. Now new geophysical surveys and archaeological excavations at the Shropshire site have revealed stunning evidence for the earliest chapters in the history of this important urban centre.
Our project focused on the site of Wroxeter Farm, located close to the crossroads of the city’s main streets – the cardo (which ran north–south and here is formed by Watling Street) and the decumanus (which ran east–west) – and opposite the forum-basilica (marketplace and town hall) and the main public baths. Despite this prominent position, however, almost nothing was known about the buildings located in this part of the city centre, which is covered by the structures and paddocks of a disused Victorian farm that was built around 1850 and declared redundant in 1999. The work that we carried out in 2024 has completely changed this picture, identifying a monumental roadside building that once stood opposite the forum-basilica; an extensive enclosed space that seems to have been empty except for a single small masonry building, perhaps a shrine or a funerary monument; a bath-suite associated with a large townhouse (one room of which contained a beautiful mosaic); and hints of possible votive activity. Before we dig deeper into these new discoveries, however, let’s explore what was already known about the city to which they belonged.
Setting the scene
Following the explorations of 19th-century antiquarians, Wroxeter saw further archaeological campaigns before and after the First World War. Then, after the Second World War, the site was the location of two of Roman Britain’s largest and most significant excavations, when Graham Webster and Philip Barker of the University of Birmingham investigated the area of the public baths, the adjacent macellum (covered market), and the remains of the legionary fortress that lies beneath the later city (see CA 14, 25, 39, 75, and 112). These research and training excavations took place from 1955 to 1990, and hundreds of students and archaeologists (including two authors of this article) worked with these two distinguished, and presumably extraordinarily patient, scholars of Roman Britain.
To that point in time, archaeological research at Wroxeter had consisted exclusively of excavation, which is time-consuming and also relatively limited in scale when compared to the extent of the Roman city. Between 1994 and 1999, however, the University of Birmingham, together with the Ancient Monuments Laboratory (now part of Historic England; see here) and Geophysical Surveys of Bradford (now GSB Prospection), used a variety of non-invasive geophysical techniques (primarily magnetometry) to survey the entire area of the walled town, an ambitious undertaking that produced the first complete plan of a Roman city in Britain.
After the Second World War, the site was the location of two of Roman Britain’s largest and most significant excavations…
The combined efforts of antiquarians and archaeologists over the past 150 years or so have given us a very good general impression of how the site developed during the Roman period. We know that Wroxeter was first occupied by the Roman army only a few years after the invasion in AD 43 when, after a short auxiliary occupation, the XIVth Legion built its fortress there during campaigns against the native peoples that lived in modern-day Wales, particularly the Ordovices and the Silures. These soldiers were replaced by the XXth Legion in the late 60s and, after the Romans’ final victory against these tribes in the later 70s, they in turn departed, moving northwards to confront and subdue new enemies. The now-abandoned fortress was refounded as the capital city of the Cornovii (the name the Romans gave to the British tribe that lived in this part of western England), from whom it took its name: Viroconium Cornoviorum. It is thought that the city’s street grid was laid out as early as about 90, but an inscription found during excavation of the forum a century ago shows that this important civic building was only completed in 129 or 130. Viroconium would become a prosperous place and it has been estimated that some 15,000 people could have lived within its walls during the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
Even though much is known about Roman Wroxeter, many mysteries remain, including what the city centre looked like. As mentioned above, previous excavations have shown that the two city blocks, or insulae, to the south of the decumanus were occupied by large public buildings: the forum-basilica (Insula IV) and the main public baths and macellum (Insula V). There is scant evidence, however, for the nature of the buildings that lay in the blocks north of the decumanus. Geophysics suggests that the eastern side of Insula II was the location of several strip-buildings and larger courtyard buildings, possibly with commercial and residential functions, but Insula I to the west was an almost total blank. Wroxeter Farm and its associated paddocks, which lie within this area, had not been included in the Wroxeter Hinterland Project of 1994-1997 (CA 157) and, intriguingly, the only firm evidence that we had from Insula I was a short length of a north–south colonnade, found in 1854. It consisted of several unusual square bases, some with slots cut into them as if they had held a balustrade, which ran along the west side of Watling Street. It has been suggested that the colonnade formed part of the boundary of another major public building, possibly Viroconium’s main civic temple.
Secrets beneath the soil
An opportunity to revisit the enigma of Insula I arose in 2024 when we were invited by English Heritage to investigate the Wroxeter Farm complex. This work began with an extensive new geophysical survey of the open spaces around the farm buildings, which was carried out in April and May by Historic England’s Geophysics Team. The best results were obtained by ground-penetrating radar (GPR), which shows very clearly the layout of the streets, buildings, and other structures beneath the farm’s western paddock. There was no sign of a monumental temple (which, if it exists, presumably lies beneath the eastern end of the farm complex closest to the Roman city’s main crossroads), but the survey provides an excellent impression of how the south-western corner of Insula I was laid out, literally putting new elements of Viroconium on the map.
In the south of the paddock we could see the sharp line of the decumanus, with a side street heading off to the north-east. A long, hall-like building lay on the north side of the main road, and its rear wall appeared to have had buttresses or plinths on its external side. This faced on to a rectangular enclosure defined by walls to the north and west, which continued eastwards beneath the farm buildings. The enclosure appears to have been devoid of buildings except for a single small square anomaly close to the buttressed wall, which was provisionally identified as a possible shrine. On the western side of the side street were other structures and buildings that occupied the western end of Insula I, including a large building in the northern part of the paddock that looked like an extensive townhouse of some kind.
These are all significant new discoveries to add to the plan of Wroxeter’s city centre, but while geophysics is very good at locating subterranean remains, on their own these techniques cannot tell us how old these buildings and other features might be, nor the functions performed in them. To answer these important questions we needed to put spades in the ground, and so, after submitting a formal project design for a follow-up excavation (and receiving Scheduled Monument Consent from Historic England), last summer we ran a four-week evaluation season at Wroxeter Farm. This was the first research excavation at Wroxeter for more than 30 years, and it was designed to answer some fairly straightforward questions, including how deep the archaeological remains lie below the modern ground surface and how well they survive; to provide dating for the buildings and other structures identified on the GPR survey; and, if possible, to obtain some indication of what they were for and how they had been used.
Trench 1 contained another section of the rear wall of the porticus, as well as a smaller, square structure interpreted as a possible shrine or funerary feature. Image: Paul Belford © Heritage Innovation
Monumental discoveries
Our excavations began in July 2024, when a team from the University of Birmingham, Vianova Archaeology, and Albion Archaeology, with students and volunteers from Cardiff University and English Heritage, opened six evaluation trenches at Wroxeter. Four of these, each measuring 10m by 2m, were located in the paddock to the west of the farm, while two smaller trenches were dug within Wroxeter Farm itself (a seventh trench in the paddock was abandoned after small fragments of possible asbestos were found in the topsoil). The paddock trenches were positioned to target specific geophysical anomalies, while those inside the farm buildings were placed where there was space in order to see if any Roman-period remains had survived the farm’s construction and use. Happily, our excavation confirmed that the archaeological remains survive remarkably well, often lying only a few centimetres below the ground, and that there is very little evidence for post-Roman activity in this part of the city (which means the Roman-period remains are, for the most part, intact and largely undisturbed).
A good example of this was Trench 2, which was located in the south of the paddock to investigate the long, rectangular roadside building on the north side of the decumanus. There the team exposed the building’s front and rear walls, including an external buttress projecting from the latter, as well as the structure’s 7.5m-wide internal space. We could see that the original ground surface sloped from south to north by 0.8m across the length of the trench, and the construction of the building had involved raising and levelling its interior using large quantities of building debris including stones and broken tiles and bricks (which must have come from an earlier building somewhere). The buttresses evidently served to reinforce the lower rear wall against the pressure of this make-up and levelling material, above which we recorded several patches of decayed mortar that seem to be the remains of the only internal floor surface, which was possibly flagged.
It is not clear what the roadside building was used for, but the absence of any traces of substantial internal walls indicates that it was an open, hall-like structure at least 50m long, which fronted on to the north side of the decumanus. Romans called this kind of building a porticus, and cities in Italy and around the Mediterranean often had colonnaded portici along their main roads where various public activities including commerce, law-suits, and council meetings would be conducted away from the heat of summer. If this interpretation is correct, it is the first monumental porticus known from a city in Roman Britain (where they are more likely to have afforded shelter from the wind and rain rather than the beating sun), and its location directly opposite Viroconium’s forum-basilica is unlikely to be a coincidence.
The walls of the porticus had been built from solidly mortared stone courses in a neatly executed petit appareil style, similar to those of the forum-basilica and the public baths. This suggested that it had been constructed at the same general time as those other public buildings, possibly as early as the early 2nd century, and our suspicions were confirmed by pottery fragments recovered a short distance away in Trench 1. A portion of the buttressed rear wall of the porticus also passed through the southern end of this trench, but here it had been robbed down to its foundations (a second buttress survived to at least three stone courses). The robbing of the wall allowed us to excavate its deep footings, which produced pottery that placed its construction no later than the early 2nd century. As for the structure’s later use, its floor appears to have been deliberately removed at some point, and the latest occupation in the trench was represented by a beam slot (or gully) and a sub-oval pit some 0.8m wide and 0.35m deep. The pit’s primary fill contained large quantities of metalworking residue mixed with charcoal, as well as two coins which show that this activity cannot have occurred earlier than 330.
Signs of a shrine?
This was not the only building that emerged during our investigations. The square anomaly on the GPR survey results turned out to be a small, almost square, well-built masonry structure whose internal chamber was floored with opus signinum, the classic Roman concrete. There was a doorway on its eastern side, and the inner chamber had plastered walls. Very unusually, painted plaster was found attached to two sides of the walls’ external face too, perhaps suggesting that these surfaces had been protected from wind and weather by a covered portico or ambulatory surrounding the structure.
Like the possible porticus, we do not know what this structure was for, but the most likely interpretation seems to be a shrine of some kind, with its chamber housing an altar or perhaps a statue. We can say, though, that the structure had been deliberately demolished to its lowest courses before the buttressed wall of the porticus was erected, so it must have been in use before the early 2nd century. This raises the intriguing possibility that the shrine, if that is what it was, could have been built before the city was founded, when Wroxeter was instead the site of a legionary fortress. If that was the case, its location north of the fortress’ west gate (porta praetoria) could indicate that the structure was part of a cemetery. It was against Roman law to bury or cremate the dead within a city’s boundaries, and the same applied to military sites; perhaps this was a mausoleum for the cremated remains of an important officer or another type of funerary monument?
The siting of the possible shrine also proves that this part of Wroxeter was lower-lying than the surrounding ground during the early Roman period, forming a natural hollow on the city centre’s western side. The structure’s demolished remains had been covered with large quantities of garden-like soil with no evidence for later buildings or occupation, suggesting that it remained an open space – perhaps a walled garden? – throughout the city’s history. The opposite side of this hollow was demarcated by the enclosure wall that had been identified on the geophysical survey results, and in order to investigate this further we opened Trench 6.
There, we found that, although the enclosure wall was as well-built as the buttressed wall of the roadside porticus, it was much narrower. We could also see that the ground within the enclosure was significantly lower than outside it and, as in the area of the possible shrine, the low-lying southern area of Trench 6 had been raised with deposits of dark humic soils that could have accumulated during horticultural cultivation. These dark soils were sealed by layers of mortared stones set on their sides that also extended northwards of the enclosure wall, perhaps representing evidence for a building platform or the collapsed walls of structures beyond the trench edges. These rubbly layers were not excavated and, although it is most likely that they date to the later Roman period, it is possible that they could come from post-Roman buildings.
What of the trenches located inside Wroxeter Farm? Trenches 5 and 7 both proved that Roman-period archaeology survives in this part of Insula I, closer to Watling Street, too. Trench 5 produced considerable evidence for a sequence of Roman buildings and occupation including walls, floors, and demolition- or abandonment-deposits surviving just below the floor of a sunken cattle shed (it is highly likely that the digging out of its interior in the 1880s removed the uppermost Roman remains). Meanwhile, Trench 7 was located to the south of the projected location of the enclosure wall found in Trench 6; it, too, contained part of a well-built wall, as well as a small, stone-covered pit that produced a complete jar and sherds of an unparalleled flagon-like vessel probably made in northern Gaul. The presence of the pit suggests that this was an external space, and the pots hint at votive offerings, perhaps associated with the temple that is thought to have stood in this area.
An archaeological aquarium
The buildings and other features described above offer invaluable insights into Insula I, but the most spectacular find from our excavation came from the trench furthest away from the decumanus and the enclosure. Trench 3 was dug to investigate a geophysical anomaly that appeared to show a room within a much larger structure, possibly a domestic townhouse. This building had a long and complicated history involving at least two episodes of remodelling, the last of which significantly changed its layout, but the earliest evidence indicates that this part of the building began as a bath suite of some kind. A wall lined with opus signinum suggests that the room identified at the western end of the trench could have been a plunge pool, while the room to the east was provided with a beautifully made mosaic floor.
The mosaic comprised a border of three broad, parallel lines in blue/black, which framed a central panel depicting dolphins, fish, a bivalve mollusc (presumably an oyster), and just possibly part of a representation of a deity that extended beyond the trench’s northern limit. This is the first figurative mosaic found at Wroxeter and, although there is no independent dating for this phase of the building, the mosaic’s style suggests it could have been laid in the later 1st or 2nd centuries. The wall to the south of the mosaic survived to at least eight courses, the lowest of which were covered with red-painted plaster. A doorway leading through it shows that this room could be accessed from other parts of the building/bath suite, and we believe it may have served as an antechamber for the possible plunge pool.
The quality of the mosaic and the architecture of the bath suite, together with the townhouse’s city-centre location, all indicate this must have been the residence of someone of the highest status, who may well have lived during the first decades after Viroconium’s foundation in the early 2nd century. At some point after the late 3rd century, however, the building was radically remodelled. The mosaic room was demolished and levelled with large quantities of building debris (especially stone, mortar, and plaster), while the possible plunge pool was raised by at least 0.5m before a new pebbled opus signinum floor was laid. The presence of such a hard-wearing floor perhaps indicates that this space became a corridor rather than a room, whereas the absence of evidence for a floor surface of any kind above the demolition deposits sealing the mosaic room shows this area became an external space.
Upcoming analysis
Our excavation at Wroxeter Farm, although relatively modest in scale, has produced significant new information about Viroconium’s city centre. The month that we spent at Wroxeter in 2024 achieved far more than we had hoped for, and the project proves that well-planned, targeted evaluations have an important role to play in the study of archaeological sites – even such a well-known one as Wroxeter. The post-excavation assessment stage of the evaluation has now been completed, including proposals for analysis and writing-up. This will involve cataloguing of all finds, as well as a ground-breaking soil micromorphology project undertaken by Professor Richard Macphail, who took column samples from Trench 1 and Trench 6 that will potentially identify any surfaces inside the enclosure and explain the processes that led to the creation of the garden-like soils with which it was filled. Artefacts and environmental evidence will have much to tell us about the histories of the buildings we excavated and how they were used, but it is noticeable that small finds (generally metal and glass) are relatively limited, numbering just 166, of which 71 are coins. The coins derive mainly from the later Roman period, ending in the 360s and 370s, with no evidence for coin loss after 380 in this part of the city. Might this also mark the end of occupation in this area? As analysis progresses, we hope that our understanding of this part of Viroconium’s city centre will become clearer still.
Acknowledgements:
Wroxeter Farm is owned and managed by English Heritage Trust and we are grateful to Win Scutt, EH’s Senior Properties Curator (West Territory), for inviting us to submit a proposal to excavate in 2024. We would also like to thank Kirsty Matthews, Site Manager at Wroxeter Roman City, and all her colleagues for making us so welcome during our month on site.
Further information:
• Dr Paul Belford of Heritage Innovation (an international cultural heritage consultancy based in Shropshire) undertook the aerial photography and photogrammetry for the excavation. Paul also produced an excellent YouTube video about the Wroxeter Farm project, which is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEfjwmtvECE.
• For more information about the Wroxeter Farm excavation, including the assessment report, see http://www.vianovaarchaeology.com/Wroxeter-Farm.
• For more about Wroxeter Roman City and how you can visit the upstanding remains, see http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/wroxeter-roman-city.
• M Clements, N Linford, and A Payne (2024) Wroxeter Farm, Wroxeter and Uppington, Shropshire: report on geophysical surveys, April and May 2024; available online (open access) at https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports (search for 42/2024).
• R H White and P A Barker (1997) Wroxeter: life and death of a Roman city (Tempus/History Press, ISBN 978-0752414096).
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