Bannovallum ("walled place on the Bain") is a name preserved in the Ravenna Cosmography and most plausibly identified with Horncastle in Lincolnshire, where the small River Bain flows, though Caistor remains a possibility. Both sites were small walled towns of the later Roman period in eastern Lindsey, with defensive circuits likely raised in the late 3rd or 4th century, suggesting an active life from at least the 2nd century through to the end of Roman administration.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site fits the pattern of small fortified towns in Lincolnshire — alongside places like Ancaster and Caistor — that served as local market centres and probably as defended nodes in the late Roman administrative and military landscape of the province of Flavia Caesariensis, possibly garrisoned in the 4th century in response to coastal and inland insecurity.
At Horncastle, substantial sections of the late Roman wall circuit survive embedded in later buildings, enclosing roughly 3.6 hectares with projecting bastions characteristic of late 3rd–4th century defences; interior occupation evidence is comparatively meagre, comprising scattered pottery, coins, and some structural traces recovered piecemeal during urban development rather than systematic excavation.
Bannovallum ("walled place on the Bain") is a name preserved in the Ravenna Cosmography and most plausibly identified with Horncastle in Lincolnshire, where the small River Bain flows, though Caistor remains a possibility. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Bannovallum is classified as a Roman settlement — 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 Horncastle (0.2 km), Two Roman barrows 180m west of Home Farm (9 km), Iron Age and Romano-British enclosure, S of village (16.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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