Guidebook: Housesteads Roman Fort
Beneath the wide Northumbrian sky and sprawled across the jagged rampart of the Whin Sill escarpment, Housesteads Roman Fort represents the northern margin of an empire which once reached as far as the Caucasus and the Atlas Mountains. It was one of 15 permanent forts built by Emperor Hadrian for the garrison of his complex new frontier, now known as Hadrian's Wall, started in AD 122.The visible remains including the finest preserved latrines known from Roman Britain reveal the changing needs of the garrison up to the early fifth century. From then the fort seems to have been largely abandoned until the 16th century, when it was taken over by a lawless community on the Anglo-Scottish border. Yet the inscriptions and sculptures scattered around the site attracted early antiquarian visitors, and Housesteads has been a focus of archaeological research for almost 200 years. Excavations in the 19th century provided one of the earliest examples of a complete plan of a Roman fort known anywhere in the empire. This beautifully illustrated new guidebook to Housesteads gives a full tour and history of the remains of this important Roman site, described by the antiquarian William Hutton as the grandest station in the whole line of Hadrians Wall. Published: June 2012