ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE 



with baths ; and the store-houses, one or more long buttressed 

 buildings fitted with damp-proof basements, in which traces of wheat 

 stores have occasionally been discovered. The remainder of the fort was 

 occupied by barracks and other apartments for the use of the soldiers. 

 The barracks, when built in stone, were usually long, narrow edifices 

 divided up into numerous rooms, fronted by a colonnade (see fig. 3,0), and 

 terminated at one end by a piece of building as broad as the other rooms 

 and colonnade together. But the employment of stone for these barracks 

 is not at all universal. We find it on Hadrian's Wall and in many British 

 forts, in which the whole interior, except the streets and one or two open 

 spaces, is covered by stone buildings. But in other British forts wood 

 was freely used, and on the German frontier stone-built barracks seem 

 hardly ever to occur. Here again, therefore, we seem to have two types 

 efforts, one simpler than the other. (See figs. 2 and 3.) 



The interior of the fort accommodated only the fighting men and 

 their weapons, stores, and horses. Other elements of the soldier's life found 

 their place outside the ramparts. One constant feature was the bath- 

 house, often mis-described as a ' villa.' It was a detached building some 

 50 or 100 yards from the fort, perhaps 40 by 90 feet in extent, 

 fitted with the usual arrangements of the Roman bath a furnace to heat 

 the air, hot rooms providing vapour baths, a small tank for the cold-water 

 plunge, which completed the bathing process, dressing-rooms, and offices 

 (fig. 7). Not infrequently two or three shrines stood near, and some- 

 times a cave of Mithras. Here, too, was the civil settlement of camp 

 followers, women and traders, and perhaps an old soldier or two and 

 a few slaves and natives. 



Such in its main features was the fort occupied by auxiliary troops. 

 The legionary fortress was much like it. It was, indeed, only the 

 auxiliary fort magnified and enlarged. The two together formed the 

 chief elements in the Roman occupation of disturbed and dangerous 

 districts. Other elements might be added frontier walls, as between 

 Tyne and Solway, or blockhouses along unsafe highways. But these 

 belong to special conditions of place or of time. The fort and fortress 

 remain the primary and permanent features. In any unquiet region 

 throughout the Empire, especially on its frontiers, we may expect to find 

 a few legionary fortresses and many auxiliary forts. That, substantially, 

 is what we do find in the uplands of Britain. 



2. SKETCH OF ROMAN DERBYSHIRE 



Derbyshire belongs to the hill-country of Britain. Its dominant 

 physical feature is an elevated limestone plateau which covers most of 

 its area. The highest points of this plateau are in the north, where the 

 Peak and Bleaklow summits exceed 2,000 feet. Thence, varied by 

 undulating downs and scored by sudden precipitous valleys, it sinks gradually 

 and irregularly towards the south and east. In general it maintains an 

 elevation of over 900 feet. Its climate is cold. Its soil produces little 



199 



