Roman skirmishing at Dere Street crossing — Chesters sector
Who Fought
History & Significance
Cilurnum or Cilurvum was an ancient Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall at Chesters near the village of Walwick, Northumberland. It is also known as Walwick Chesters to distinguish it from Great Chesters fort and Halton Chesters.
Cilurnum is included in the Notitia Dignitatum of the late 4th/early 5th century.
Cilurnum is considered to be the best-preserved and best example of a Roman cavalry fort on Hadrian's Wall. The site is now preserved by English Heritage as Chesters Roman Fort. There is a museum on the site housing finds from the fort and elsewhere along the wall.
Hadrian's Wall was built from 122 AD and the forts were built a few years later. Cilurnum was first built as a cavalry fort with its walls projecting north of the Wall and with three of its main gateways on the north allowing easier and rapid access to that side. It was given over to infantry later.
Excavations here helped show the early changes in construction of Hadrian's Wall. At Chesters the original Wall project had been carried out only in part: Turret 27a had been built on the site of the later fort, together with a short length of Wall on either side of it, just sufficient to serve as buttresses to the turret, whilst the frontal ditch for the Wall had been dug completely. It was shown that the fort-builders then had to demolish the turret and fill in the ditch for the cavalry fort. This also made it clear that the new cavalry forts (at Benwell, Halton Chesters, Uxellodunum and Rudchester) at least were not for the defence of the Wall but to allow rapid attacks northwards into unoccupied territory.
A road from the southern gateway linked the fort with the Stanegate. The two smaller single gates at each side allowed the Roman Military Way of the mid-2nd century to pass through the fort. The rampart walk was built fifteen feet above ground-level to match the Wall. The height of the gates and towers would have been more than 9 m.
The site guarded Chesters Bridge carrying the Military Way behind the wall across the River North Tyne. Massive abutments of this bridge survive across the river from the fort.
Four large Roman columns, believed to come from Cilurnum, may be seen supporting the south aisle in the church of St Giles at Chollerton, a couple of miles upstream from the fort.
An early inscription on an altar dedicated to Disciplina, found in 1978, indicates the earliest-known military presence was a wing of cavalry, ala Augusta ob virtutem appellata (‘named Augusta because of its valour’). Inscriptions have also been found showing that the Cohors I Delmatarum in (138-161), from present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina (Yugoslavia), and the Cohors I Vangionum Milliaria Equitata from Upper Rhineland in Germany, were also stationed here.
The ground they fought on
The site of Roman skirmishing at Dere Street crossing — Chesters sector lies on Yoredale Group, bedrock that formed in the Bashkirian. The rock here is limestone with subordinate sandstone and argillaceous rocks.
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- Cilurnum · Wikipedia
- History of Chesters Roman Fort · English Heritage