Chapter 5

Papcastle fort and vicus

Unfortunately the layout of Papcastle fort cannot be seen, as can that of Housesteads or Chesters. We may only dimly discern some of the enclosing ramparts. Excavations, never very extensive, have however revealed sufficient for us to have some idea of its position and extent and evidence from such excavations as those at Vindolanda helps us to piece together a picture of life in the extensive civil settlement or vicus which existed below the fort.

In his first edition of “Britannia”, in 1586, the historian William Camden referred to “the carcase of an ancient fort whose Roman antiquity is attested by not a few monuments”. In the edition of 1607 he added

• “where among many monuments of antiquitie, was found a broad vessell of a greenish stone, artifically engraven with little images; which whether it had been a Laver to wash in, or a font… for which purpose it serveth now at Brid-Kirke, that is, at S. Bridgids Church hard by, I dare not say”

This is the famous Bridekirk font, now with runic inscriptions added in the 12th. century, possibly brought from the ruins of Papcasde as Camden says.

Detailed records begin in 1725 when the antiquary William Stukeley picnicked on the site with Humphrey Senhouse and the historian Gale. Stukeley wrote:

• “The Roman castrum lies upon the top of the hill, above the village. I soon traced out its whole circumference, though the inhabitants had not the least notion of where it stood, supposing it to be lower down…. The whole town, and perhaps Cockermouth castle and town, are built out of it; likewise the walls of all the pastures and corn-fields adjoining. Free-stone cut is very common, which they say must have been fetched a good way off, because there is none such in the neighbourhood; and a good deal of ashlar is still left in the ground …. (He then refers to coins, etc., found on the site.)

The famous font, now at Bridekirk, was taken up at this place, in the pasture south of the south-east angle of the city, by a lane called Moorwent. … (References to stones, slates and flooring discovered.} …. This was a beautiful and well-chosen place, a south-west side of the hill, a most noble river running under it, and a pretty good country about it, as one may judge by the churches; .. On the side of the hill are many pretty springs; at one of them we drank a bottle of wine, to the memory of the founders; then poured some of the red juice into the fountain-head, to the nymph of the place. “[1]

In a letter of the early 1740s Thomas Routh spoke of ruins on the declivity towards the river below the fort. In a field between the village and the river, known as Sib by, was a pavement “curiously laid with large stones three-quarters of a yard square and two or three inches thick”, on a base of “coarse strong cement”. Some had been torn up in a search for coins underneath. In the same field two walls ran east-west, seven yards apart. Also found were a Samian vase (brick-red or black pottery with a lustrous glaze, named after the island of Samos), a stone trough or pillar base, a drain and a clay vessel. The following year a fibula and a coin of Trajan were unearthed.

F.L. Ballentine-Dykes of Dovenby, who made a complete survey of the road from Papcastle to Maryport which passed his home, wrote of Pap castle in 1859:

• “The ditch is plain on the east, down past the Pinfold, through Mr. Wybergh’s and Dr. Dodgson’s grounds, and, in a somewhat irregular line, through Mr. Waugh’s property to the river.

• There is a very fine rampart at the river’s edge for some little distance, giving apparently a river frontage. Nothing can be traced up the hill again on the west, all having been obliterated by a considerable wash and run on to the land from the town.

• At the foot of the hill is a very distinct track of a road sweeping round to the south, and crossing the Derwent by a ford. It is popularly termed the Friar’s Walk. This has greatly the appearance of a junction with the road lately discovered in Mr. Harris’s pleasure grounds and running under part ofhis house (Derwent Lodge).

• I happened to be looking over the locality a day or two after the discovery of a perfect Roman well, in Mr. Hams’s pleasure-grounds. It had shortly been cleaned out, but no remains had been met with. I found it very neatly walled, about 2ft. 4 ins, in diameter, and 25 to 30 feet deep, very similar to the one in Maryport camp. As soon as it had been cleaned out, the water began to flow rapidly.

• If the ditch bounded the camp, I thought that the well, being outside, might have appeared strange, but it was evidently used for other purposes. Close to it a sort of receptacle was discovered, in which was a large mass of unworked pottery-clay of a fine red colour and quality, unknown in this country. Along with the clay were also pieces of finished pottery and fragments. And the well, no doubt, was used for tempering the clay, and for other purposes of the workmen, who seem to have hastily left the locality. In the upper part of the ditch a quantity of charred grain also was found a few years ago.”

Of this description Eric Birley noted:

• “the suggestion that the whole Roman site was enclosed by a rampart and ditch carried down the hill and along the north bank of the Derwent, thus in effect enclosing the vicus downhill from the fort. If Dykes was correct, that would mean that Papcastle ( … like Maryport, Kirkby Thore ) developed (no doubt in the third and fourth centuries) into a substantial place in its own right, the area ultimately defended by a rampart being substantially larger than that occupied by the fort under shelter of which the civilian settlement had grown up.” [2]

Ballentine-Dykes drew attention to the excellence of this site for a Roman fort. It stands on a spur of heavy clay almost three hundred feet above sea-level with clear views around. The north face falls fairly steeply into a narrow depression, marshy at the bottom; to the west the land runs down in a long ridge to flat ground by the river; while to the south it drops more quickly to the riverside land. Only the neck of the spur, to the east, required defensive work. In addition the Derwent circles it to the south.

The Friar’s Walk mentioned by Dykes fits in with the road to the south-west described in the last chapter. At its end there must have been a ford or bridge across the Derwent. There is no masonry visible and the crossing has never been investigated. Discoveries began to indicate that Papcastle was an important fort and the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society decided to excavate, the aim being to fix the limits of the camp by trenching. Under W.G . . Collingwood between four and seven men worked for a fortnight in 1912 at a cost of £20 and, although much of interest was found, it is not surprising that with such limited resources and time the task was not completed. To the north they found the rampart to be about nine feet across. A ditch was unnecessary on this side because of the slope, but about twelve feet north of the rampart was a retaining wall three feet wide.

There were no remains of the southern rampart. The excavators located a gate in the eastern wall. The north and south jambs were found, but the whole had been robbed and altered, the complete rampart having been removed from south of the gateway, leaving a hollow. This gateway stood just to the right of the present entrance to Castle Gardens and its discovery is of interest in assessing the size of the fort, for if it was in the middle of the rampart then we can estimate where the south-east corner was, since the position of the north-east corner is known. By this argument, the corner must have been north-west of Derwent Lodge.

The paving of the gateway, as elsewhere on the site, was a concrete made of lime and river gravel, with many quartz and coloured pebbles on the surface as ornament. Fragments of roofing slates, amphorae and Samian ware lay on the floors by the gateway. Attempts to find a granary failed, nor was the principia located, but the team did uncover a building containing large quantities of fragmented pottery. Trenching revealed that large parts of the camp were terraced with retaining walls on the slope to the south, the northern rampart being almost on the crest of the hill.

An interesting discovery in 1912 was that there had been an earlier fort on the site, further below the surface and less disturbed than the one being excavated.

Collingwood comments thus on the results of his investigations:

• “The whole site has been so thoroughly disturbed in the search for building stone that a complete excavation would perhaps be of little service. Our positive conclusions may be briefly put. There were two Roman forts at Papcastle: the earlier, of which we have only the north-east corner, built in good ashlar and lime masonry, and the later, less well built but probably larger, constructed late in the second century AD. There does not seem to be any interval of time between the two occupations; but we may perhaps connect the second with the general reorganisation of the frontier district associated with the name of Severus. Of this we have the north and east walls, the former complete and the length of the latter suggested by the position of the gate from which the Old Carlisle road started. It appears to have been a roughly rectangular fort, measuring perhaps 620 feet by 540 feet. But the comparative poverty of its internal remains might lead us to suppose that it was not an important military station.” [3]

Collingwood’s final conclusion is probably wrong. His suggested dimensions of 620 feet by 540 feet [188 x 164.5m] are of interest, for by comparison with visible Housesteads’s 600 feet by 360 feet we may get some idea of Papcastle’ s size.

A further excavation, again rather limited, took place in 1961-2. The former Cockermouth Rural District Council decided to build elderly people’s bungalows on part of the site (Castle Gardens) and on behalf of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works a small team under Dorothy Charlesworth excavated in July 1961 and April-May 1962. The limiting factors were again time and shortage of suitable labour, to which was added the further handicap of avoiding the positions of the bungalow foundations. The remains were found to be very near the present surface, making easy the earlier robbery for building stone. Also dressed stone had been extensively re-used in successive Roman buildings, presenting the archaeologist with further difficulties. There was slight evidence of a fort with timber buildings. The post-hole which held the timber upright of the east gateway was located, on the inner side of the rampart, and obviously that on the northern side of the gateway as a cobbled road ran to its immediate south.

Remains found inside the fort suggest a long history. A succession of timber and stone barrack blocks, with the levels very close together, go up to the fourth century and pottery found on a cobbled barracks floor dates the final rebuilding at about AD 367. Many of the buildings at various times seem to have been erected without foundations and when reconstructions were carried out the earlier work was completely levelled, two factors which make detailed layout and successive buildings difficult to distinguish. (In general, stone replaced timber and turf in the walls, gateways, granaries and other main buildings of the Cumbrian forts from about the 2nd century, timber often being retained for barrack blocks.) In addition to determining that the barracks were built along the contours, the 1961-2 excavation located the commandant’s quarters and in the NW corner of the area the team investigated what may have been the commandant’s bath-house. It had been heavily robbed of stone, only the lowest course of masonry, set in mortar, remaining, but there were roofing tiles and a water-tank on the site.

Finds on this occasion included coins, bronze and pottery, some of it Samian ware. Three discoveries are worthy of special mention. The first consisted of some fragments of bronze scale armour. [4] The second was a tombstone. It had an inscription on its lower side, recording Apullio who died at 35 and probably his daughter Sabina and wife Huctia who died at 17 and 42. This was only the stone’s first use, for after serving as a memorial it had apparently formed part of a water-tank and weapons had been sharpened on its edge wearing grooves. Finally it became a paving stone. [5]

Fig 515 Figured Samaian ware from Papcastle fort

The third find, a draped bronze figure only 3% inches ht, is in Tunie House. The right arm is broken, but the other holds a cornucopia. It may represent a goddess, possibly a blending of Roman and British mythology. [6]

Tullie House obtained in 1899 a fibula (a clasp or buckle) from Papcastie, believed to be from the beginning of the first century and therefore brought to Derventio from elsewhere. [7]

Other discoveries, often made during building in the village, include a fragment of a stone pine-cone, the form of gravestone used by the Etruscans. Tullie House also has a small uninscribed altar “found in the Derwent, probably near Papcastie.”

Few inscriptions have been found, perhaps because Cumbrians were superstitious about writing on stones and defaced any they found. [8] In 1865 a stone was found with a vow inscribed commemorating the dedicator’s promotion in AD 242 from Papcastle to a post at Burgh. It refers to Aballava and for long this was assumed to be the Roman name for this fort, still being used in 1925. [9]

Only comparatively recently was it decided that Papcastle was Derventio and that Aballava was the name of the fort at Burgh by Sands. “Derventio” comes from the Celtic for “abounding in oaks”.

An inscription of AD 241 was “dug up amongst the ruins of the court of Cockermouth Castle … in lowering the ground” and R.G. Collingwood drew attention to one in another part of the castle.

• “In the second Dungeon in Cockermouth Castle, close to the ground on the right as you go in, built into the wall, is a stone ten by six inches, inscribed LEG VINIPFF in a style not unlike the Sixth Legion’s records in the Birdoswald sector of Hadrian’s Wall. It therefore probably indicates work by that Legion at Papcastle in the first half of the second century.” [10]

Scraps of leather have been found on the camp site suggesting a shoemaker’s or leather worker’s shop.

When on the move the Roman army lived in ridge-shaped leather tents, covering an area ten feet square, known as ‘papilio’ because of their butterfly shape. The Tullie House Museum contains a piece of such a tent from Papcastle. It shows one piece to have been superimposed on another and joined by a leather thong. Other thongs apparently tied back the flaps to open the tent. [11]

The air reconnaissance of northem Britain carried out by Dr. St. Joseph in the early 1950s [12] showed the walls on three sides of the fort, the guard chambers of the gate on the west and a road leading eastwards from the east gate. The photographs give the size as 600 feet north to south and 500 feet east to west, just over 6.75 acres. Birley observes:

• “That makes it substantially larger than most of the forts in our district, and adds to the urgency for finding more about its intemallayout” [13]

and he describes it as

• “a key site in the occupation of our territory”

Some knowledge was added by the excavation ten years later, but there is much more we would like to know about the site.

The aerial photographs indicate that the fort was enlarged. This may have been necessary from time to time to house additional units, such as a cuneus (a later type of cavalry unit) which one of the inscriptions suggests may have been stationed here.

The soldiers here would have the duties of watching the mountains and valleys to the south and east and of doing patrol and convoy duties on the diverging roads. Somewhere outside the camp would be a parade ground.

The needs of a garrison of this size were considerable and to satisfy those needs a large civilian vicus grew between the fort and the Derwent. (It is estimated that a garrison of 1000 soldiers in Housesteads required nearly 2500 civilians – men, women and children living outside). [14] Air reconnaissance and the present low ridges in the area suggest that the space below the fort was filled by a settlement of considerable size, the whole enclosed by a rampart and ditch. Vici outside Cumbrian forts grew rapidly in the 3rd century.

Life in such a settlement is a study in itself and it is impossible to give more than a brief outline of the activities which must have been found in the lower part of Papcastle at that time. The population would include British families attracted by the possibility of work and trade and, after the first fears were overcome, by the peaceful existence within the shadow of the fort. There were probably women and children of various nationalities who had followed their soldier “husbands” across the Channel under arrangements made by the authorities. There would be retired soldiers, for after Hadrian’s Wall was completed the garrisons in the area were fairly static and men would tend to settle down in the only place they knew well, practising some trade or craft and remaining on the military reserve, and making homes with the women with whom they had lived during service and whom they were allowed to marry on retirement. Many of these men would have some standing, for after 25 years’ service Roman citizenship was granted, a reward much prized as a legal status.

Romans became increasingly scarce as troops were drawn more and more from other parts of the empire – Spain, France, the Rhine, the Tyrol, even as far as the Tigris, – and from Britain itself. Hadrian is thought to have favoured local farmers’ sons as recruits, for they were strong and used to the climate, and if recruited at the usual age of 18 to 22 were good for about 25 years’ service.

The local population became a mixture of nationalities. Inter-marriage produced a hybrid race. Figures are not available for Papcastle, but it is thought that of the 13,000 troops on the Wall itself 40% were ‘married’ by the middle of the 2nd century and at Housesteads half the 1000 soldiers were married by the 3rd century when the Emperor Septimus Severus annulled the regulation requiring a man to wait until retirement before marrying. The accommodation at Papcastle would be similar to that recently uncovered at Vindolanda, families sharing strip houses or living in the married quarters provided.

There were definite strata of social position and class distinction, evident in living accommodation as well as in social mixing. Commanding officers and leading provincial administrators and their wives were at the top of the scale.

Life was short by our standards. Burials provide information, inscriptions telling us of the family life and religious outlook of the time (occasional references to Christianity come in the fourth century). Human remains reveal size, diseases and length of life. Nothing is available from Papcastle, but in a cemetery for poor people at York 42% of the women had died by 26 and most of the men by 40. The men were about our size, the women rather smaller. Skeletons indicate that diet was good, without vitamin deficiency, but rheumatism was common. The civilian cemetery outside Brougham fort shows that the dead were given simple cremations and food vessels, etc., provided for the after life. [15] Somewhere lies undiscovered the cemetery for Derventio.

A multitude of tasks would be performed by the civilians; they were an essential part of the maintenance of the garrison. They would provide food and other agricultural supplies, farmers coming in from the surrounding district to the Papcastle market, where resident craftsmen as well as the military would need their products. Converging from the valleys of Lorton and Embleton and from the wide sweep of plain to the north and west would arrive supplies of milk, cheese, butter, eggs, meat, hides, wool, skins, etc. There is evidence of some forts using a considerable variety of vegetables, fruit and wild products such as nuts and nettles. Hunters and herdsmen would be involved as well as farmers. Wine, olive oil and spices were imported to this area.

A wide variety of craftsmen would seek to satisfy the needs of soldiers and civilians – leather workers making shoes, belts, purses, harness and tents; carpenters producing large articles such as doors, furniture and wagons and small utensils like cups, platters, spoons and dice-boxes; metal workers providing hammers and chisels, harness and wagon parts, nails, knives, locks, chains; and masons, quarrymen, foresters and lime- and charcoal-burners, etc., following their trades. Glass came mostly from the continent, pottery from the British midlands or Gaul, most grain from southern Britain. The Romans worked iron, copper, lead and silver in the area. They were skilled metal-workers producing finer products such as brooches and other jewellery, religious figures and harness mounts.

Celtic art was often adapted by native craftsmen to the tastes of the Roman purchasers. In 1847 quarrymen clearing the surface of the limestone at Eaglesfield found a twisted ring of fine gold, near the line of the Roman road and presumably of Romano-British origin. [16] It was sold to a watchmaker in Cockermouth.

In addition there was employment to be found as baths staff- rubbing bathers with oil, selling delicacies to the troops as they enjoyed what was a social occasion, cleaning the premises, stoking; or in managing the mansion or inn where officers travelling would stay and one could find work in the separate bath-house of the inn, in its kitchen and dining room, in the stables or in generally keeping the building clean and ready. Within the vicus there would also be drinking booths, gambling rooms and brothels for the soldiers’ use.

Indications of the position of granaries in the vicus have been found. Askew quotes William Dickinson in his ‘Agricultural Essay on West Cumberland’:

• “The soil of Sib by Brows is reputed to be blackened with the carbon of burned grain belonging to the ancient Romans. Tradition says … granaries .. , which stood there, were accidentally destroyed by fire; or this district may lie on the remains of an ancient forest destroyed by the same agency,”[ 17]

As mentioned in an earlier chapter, grain was already being grown before the Romans came, In 1904, in Brewery Field on the east bank of the Cocker, was found a filled cavity, eight feet deep and six wide at the top, lined with three inches of puddled clay. There was blackened grain in the bottom, older than the Papcastle wheat, and this may have been an early British grain store. [18] More recently, in 1923, a trench being dug for a gas-main passed through a layer of blackened wheat near the east gateway of the fort. Many grains were almost intact, though reduced to 31 % of their normal weight. There were Samian ware remains with the wheat. This was not a granary site. [19]

Another link with the Roman occupants came in the 1940s when a local resident saw a party of Italian farm-workers, from the prisoner-of-war camp on Moota, collecting snails to eat. They said Papcastle was the only place they had found this kind, familiar to them in Italy. This was a reminder of Whellan’s comment in 1860

• “The new road from Cockermouth is cut through a portion of the field where the castrum stood, The large edible snail (Helix pomatia) is said to be common in the adjoining hedges and may have been introduced by the Romans as an article of diet.”

Mention must be made of the wells in the vicus. That referred to by Stukeley lies in the centre of the lawn in front of Derwent Lodge. There are others in the area, one behind Well House in the west of the present village and one now by the front garden wall of No. 6, The Mount.

Inscriptions from elsewhere indicate that a vicus was largely a self-governing community with its own village elders, [20] responsible for cleaning the streets, organising the market, providing a water supply, settling disputes, collecting taxes, making official returns, etc. Over all would be the commanding officer of the fort, responsible for general economic and political policy and ensuring that the needs of his troops had precedence, but with no time to spare for minor day-to-day administration. Nevertheless, civilian life would be constantly overshadowed by the military presence.

It is likely that the Romans paid little attention to the central hills and valleys, unless there were minerals to be mined. Provided they gave no trouble, the British living well up the valley from Cockermouth would see little of the occupying forces, although gradually some Roman influence reached them, for small Roman objects and coins have been found in the hill villages. These might have been obtained when people were tempted by the opportunity to sell in the market or attracted by the pay of army service, but on the whole the valley people remained poor and outside the main stream of events. Closer to the military agriculture thrived, farms springing up along the roads and round the forts, for here markets and protection were alike provided. Farmers experienced a prosperity they had never known before, encouraged by the Romans to grow corn to save their imports and helped by the introduction of iron ploughs.

It would be interesting to see what lies below present-day Papcastle, Perhaps little, considering the extensive use of the stone for Cockermouth Castle and other local building. We must read into the site what has been discovered in the vicus at Vindolanda -and is still being discovered as excavations continue. Even at Housesteads, regarded as a show fort, only 20% of the vicus has been investigated. [21]

When we look at the low mounds of the camp ramparts and at the flat fields along the river, it is hard to imagine a thriving, bustling community of perhaps three thousand, with roofed buildings, smoking fires, open-fronted shops, rumbling carts, marching soldiers, playing children and all the noise and confusion of a thriving market, overlooked by the hill-top fort which dominated and controlled life. The illustrators of recent publications on Hadrian’s Wall, and on the soldiers and civilians who lived along it have done a great service in helping our imagination. What they depict of the Wall forts and vici would be repeated, with local modifications, at Derventio.

More About Roman Papcastle

This History of Cockermouth contains three chapters on the Papcastle Roman site, west of the town, detailing its domestic and military life and importance.

Since the 1981 edition of this book, there have been further excavations which suggest that the site was much larger than once thought and important as a military base in Cumbria.

In 1984 there was a short rescue dig on the site of the Burroughs Cottages which had to be demolished. The dig by the University of Lancaster discovered massive foundations of what was probably a temple; at a low level appreciable remains of early timber structures; a well-metalled road; evidence of much industrial activity and a number of interesting small finds, including a statue previously unknown in Britain. The dig director, Adrian Olivier, suggested this pointed to the possibility that Papcastle had been the armoury supplying the forts of the north-west of Cumbria. In the mid-1990s the occupant of a house in modem Papcastle decided to extend his home. Digging the foundations revealed much evidence of Roman occupation – pottery, large stone foundations, etc. The houseowner persuaded Channel 4’s popular archaeology programme “Time Team” to visit Papcastle, and in 1998 despite being restricted to just three days, they found much at Derwent Lodge Cottage and on Sibby Brows rediscovered the extent of the vicus. Evidence from this weekend included a road system, strip houses along roadways, some perhaps second century buildings, a bronze mirror, Samian ware pottery etc. The archaeologists summing up their discoveries as “smashing finds “, now consider that unusually for the North of England, this was a permanent settlement and proper town, perhaps on a par with Corbridge. There is now strong evidence that Roman Papcastle may well have occupied nearly all the area from the fort south to the river Derwent.