Great Bulmore was a civilian settlement located roughly 2 km north-east of the legionary fortress of Isca Silurum (Caerleon), occupying a riverside position on the Usk. It functioned as an extramural community linked to the fortress and was active broadly from the late 1st through the 3rd centuries AD, with the main canabae and vicus developing immediately around Caerleon itself and Great Bulmore representing an outlying focus of habitation and burial.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site is significant as part of the dispersed civilian hinterland that grew up to service Legio II Augusta at Caerleon, illustrating how military bases generated satellite settlement beyond the immediate canabae. A cluster of funerary inscriptions from the area — including stones recording veterans and their families — suggests Great Bulmore was particularly associated with retired legionaries and dependents.
The site is best known from a notable group of tombstones and funerary monuments recovered in the 18th and 19th centuries, several naming legionary veterans of II Augusta, indicating an associated cemetery zone alongside settlement. Modern excavation has been limited, but fieldwork and watching briefs have recorded building remains, pottery and other occupation debris consistent with a roadside/riverside vicus-type settlement, though the full plan and extent remain poorly understood.
Great Bulmore was a civilian settlement located roughly 2 km north-east of the legionary fortress of Isca Silurum (Caerleon), occupying a riverside position on the Usk. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Great Bulmore 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 Isca Silurum (2.1 km), Caerleon Roman amphitheatre (2.4 km), Carrow Hill Roman fort (7.2 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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