The Exeter bathhouse was a substantial stone-built legionary thermae constructed c. AD 55–60 to serve the Second Augustan Legion stationed at the fortress of Isca Dumnoniorum. It was one of the earliest masonry buildings in Roman Britain, comprising the standard sequence of frigidarium, tepidarium and caldarium with a palaestra, and remained in military use until the legion's withdrawal c. AD 75; the site was subsequently demolished and incorporated into the basilica and forum of the civitas capital of the Dumnonii around AD 80.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As a legionary bathhouse rather than a civilian one, it represents one of the most ambitious early Roman masonry projects in the south-west and demonstrates the rapid imposition of Roman military infrastructure in the Dumnonian peninsula. Its conversion into the heart of the civilian town illustrates the standard trajectory by which military sites were transformed into administrative centres for the new civitates.
The bathhouse was identified during Lady Aileen Fox's and later Christopher Henderson's excavations beneath the Cathedral Close in the 1970s–80s, revealing well-preserved foundations, hypocaust pilae, opus signinum floors, and parts of the caldarium and frigidarium plunge baths. The remains lie preserved beneath the Cathedral Green and have been the subject of ongoing proposals for public display,
The Exeter bathhouse was a substantial stone-built legionary thermae constructed c. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a bath house site from the Roman period in Britain.
Exeter Roman Bathhouse 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 Isca Dumnoniorum (0.5 km), Unnamed Roman fort, Cheeke Street, Exeter (0.6 km), Stoke Hill (2.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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