Letocetum was a Romano-British small town and posting station on Watling Street, situated where the road crossed the route between the legionary fortresses at Wroxeter and the Midlands. It began as a military fort and vexillation base in the mid-1st century AD (c. AD 50s–70s), associated with the conquest of the Welsh borders, and developed into a thriving civilian *mansio* settlement from the later 1st through the 4th century, with major rebuilding phases visible in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As a *mansio* (official inn and posting station) with attached bath-house, Letocetum served the *cursus publicus*, providing accommodation for imperial officials and travellers on the vital Watling Street artery linking London to Wroxeter and Chester. Its name (meaning "grey wood" in Brittonic) survived into the early medieval period as Lichfield, indicating continuity of regional importance.
Excavations from the 19th century onwards, notably by Bagnall in the 1900s and later by Birmingham archaeologists, have exposed the well-preserved stone foundations of the courtyard *mansio* and an adjacent bath-house with hypocausts, *frigidarium*, *tepidarium* and *caldarium*, now in the care of English Heritage. Finds include coinage, samian and coarse wares, painted wall plaster, and evid
Letocetum was a Romano-British small town and posting station on Watling Street, situated where the road crossed the route between the legionary fortresses at Wroxeter and the Midlands. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman site, Letocetum is classified as a Roman site — 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 *Letocetum (0.2 km), Engine Arm Aqueduct, Warley (19.1 km), Kinvaston Fort (19.2 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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