Tripontium ("three bridges") was a small Roman roadside settlement and posting station on Watling Street, situated near Cave's Inn, Warwickshire, between Rugby and Lutterworth. It is named in the Antonine Itinerary (Iter II and Iter VI) as a mansio/mutatio between Bannaventa and Manduessedum, and was active from at least the late 1st century AD through to the late 4th or early 5th century, developing from a road station into a substantial roadside small town.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Its role was primarily as a staging post on the major military and commercial artery between London and Wroxeter/Chester, providing changes of horses, lodging, and likely tax/toll functions, while also serving as a local market centre for the surrounding rural population in the south-east Midlands. It is one of the better-recorded "small towns" of Roman Britain through long-running local excavation.
Excavations by the Rugby Archaeological Society from the 1960s onwards have revealed timber and later stone buildings strung along Watling Street, including a probable mansio, a bath-house, evidence of metalworking, butchery and ceramics, plus coins, brooches, and a late Roman cemetery indicating occupation continuing into the post-400 period. The settlement appears unwalled and linear, covering roughly 16–20 hectares, with no certain evidence of formal defences identified.
Tripontium ("three bridges") was a small Roman roadside settlement and posting station on Watling Street, situated near Cave's Inn, Warwickshire, between Rugby and Lutterworth. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Tripontium Roman station 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 ‘Tripontio’ (0.2 km), Watling Street Roman Road (7.9 km), Roman town at High Cross Also in WARWICKSHIRE (10.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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