Aquae Arnemetiae was a small town in the Roman province of Britannia. The settlement was based around its natural warm springs. The Roman occupation ran from around 50 AD to 410 AD. Today it is the town of Buxton, Derbyshire in England.
Aquae Arnemetiae means 'Waters of Arnemetia'. Arnemetia was the Romano-British goddess of the sacred grove (the name Arnemetia was derived from the Celtic for beside the sacred grove). The town was recorded as Aquis Arnemeza in the Ravenna Cosmography's list of all known places in the world in about 700 AD. The entry is between places with which the town had road connections: Nauione (Navio Roman fort at Brough), Zerdotalia (Ardotalia, later called Melandra fort, near Glossop) and Mantio (Manchester).
Aquae Arnemetiae and Aquae Sulis (modern town of Bath in Somerset) were the only two Roman bath towns in Britain. The Romans built a bath at the location of the main thermal spring. In the late 17th-century Cornelius White operated bathing facilities at the hot spring at the site of the Buxton Old Hall. In 1695 he discovered an ancient smooth stone bath (20m long by 7m wide) as well as a lead cistern (2m square) on an oak timber frame. When the Crescent hotel was built on the site in 1780, a Roman bath was identified and described as ‘a leaden cistern'. The bath is now buried beneath the Crescent, next to the Natural Mineral Baths building that was constructed next to the hotel. Near to the site of the main spring, excavations in 2005 revealed the entry passage and doorways to the Roman baths. During this construction work, a wall believed to be the side of a palaestra (exercise hall) was also uncovered. Between 2009 and 2012 further underground cisterns and a large iron cauldron were revealed.
The main spring was excavated in the 1970s and a hoard of 232 Roman coins was found, spanning 300 years of the Roman occupation of Britain. Coins would have been thrown into the sacred waters to seek the favour of the Gods. The coins and pieces of bronze jewellery found with them are on display in the Buxton Museum.
The geothermal spring rises from about 1 km below ground and about a million litres of water flow out per day. The mineral water emerges at a steady 27 °C. Analysis of the water has indicated that it has a high magnesium content and that it originated around 5,000 years ago.
Emperor Hadrian may have visited the town in 122 AD on his way to Wroxeter (Shrewsbury). In 1787 Major Hayman Rooke uncovered a long section of the Roman town wall, which is now beneath the landscaped hillside of The Slopes. At the same time Rooke also documented details of the base of a temple in the same area, overlooking the site of the baths and springs. The temple was dedicated to the water deity Arnemetia. It had a shrine room set on a rectangular podium, with a columned portico at the front. The Roman floor plan of a macellum (covered market with a central atrium) and floor mosaics were documented in 1860, on the west side of Buxton's market place near Fountain Street.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Aquae Arnemetiae was a small town in the Roman province of Britannia. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a bath house site from the Roman period in Britain.
Aquae *Arnemetiae is classified as a Roman bath house — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Batham Gate, Roman road (9 km), Dimin Dale Romano-British settlement and field system, south of Taddington Wood (11.3 km), Navio (15 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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