Vindobala / Rudchester
This fort lies around 11km west of Condercum Fort at Benwell. That’s a good stretch between forts and is the second longest after the 17km between Camboglanna (Castlesteads) and Uxelodunum (Stanwix).
It was built at a critical point on the Wall, just like Condercum, right in the middle of two turrets: 13a and 13b. Like most of the other forts, it was built after the Wall was completed. Exact dates are unknown, but it’s thought to have been finished by AD 125.
The fort is completely buried under the lumps and bumps of modern fields, and, as a World Heritage Site, it cannot be tampered with. You can see the later rigg and furrow fields to the lower left-hand side of the fort in the LIDAR image below, which lie over the vicus, or civilian settlement of the fort.
Built following the 1746 Jacobite Rebellion, General Wade’s military road was built right through the middle of the fort. As he forged his new road west from Heddon-on-the-Wall, peeling away from the old west road to Hexham, he consumed Hadrian’s Wall as he went, using it for hardcore. Like a radge Pac-Man, the men munched their way through one of the most important historical sites in the world. The road was intended to allow the army to move cannons between the cities of Newcastle and Carlisle, should there be another rebellion of the Scots.
Why Here?
This fort was constructed to protect several strategically important areas.
First was the March Burn to the west, which was an ancient route leading down to the Tyne and then along the river downstream to the ford at Newburn. The Romans didn’t build everything, you know… The Brigantes were already trading, so tracks and fords were well-worn routes going back to the Bronze Age and maybe earlier. It’s thought that this ancient road, repurposed by the Romans, continued north and joined the Devil’s Causeway at a site known as the Devil’s Crossroads near Longhorsely, where the Devil’s Causeway takes an unusual turn.
To the east is the Rudchester Burn, but just over the stream to the very southeast is a hillfort — maybe it contained a particularly unruly bunch of radgie, blue-painted warriors that the Romans wanted to keep in check.
As you can see, the fort is slap bang in the middle of these two features, and the two turrets associated with Milecastle 13.
The Fort
Very little is known of the fort itself. Excavations that have taken place show it was razed to the ground by fire on at least two occasions in antiquity, perhaps from successful raids by local tribes springing forth in the night from their hillfort less than a mile away.
Again, in modern times, such was the damage caused by Wade’s Road construction, one of the last written accounts of the fort in antiquity was by John Horsley in 1732. He describes the site thus:
“The fort has been very considerable, as the ruins of it at present are very considerable. On the north side there have been six turrets, one at each corner, one at each side of the gate, and one between each corner and those adjoining the gate. On the east and west sides there is also a tower between the gate and the angle, in that part of the fort that is north of the side of the wall: but ’tis doubtful whether there has been the same number of towers in that part that lies within the wall. At present however, they are not so distinct.”
Later, in 1863, so little was left to see that Collingwood-Bruce remarked:
“Unless the traveller be on his guard, he may pass through the middle of Vindobala without knowing it.”
Stamfordham Road runs down the eastern rampart to form a crossroads at the point where Hadrian’s Wall would have met the fort’s eastern rampart.
Unusual Features
The Mithraic Temple
Mithraism was a Roman mystery cult popular with soldiers from the 1st to 4th centuries AD, centred on the god Mithras, who symbolically slew a sacred bull, a cosmic act of creation and renewal. Worship was male-only and took place in cave-like temples called Mithraea, with secret rituals, shared meals, and a strict initiation hierarchy.
The site was found 140 meters to the west during excavations in 1844. Four altars were discovered here dedicated to Mithras and are now in the Great North Museum, along with a full-size statue of Hercules that was also found.
The Mithraeum at Vindobala (Rudchester) is the first discovered as you head west from Pons Aelius (Newcastle), and it differs from the temple at Benwell, which was dedicated not to Mithras but to the local god Antenociticus.
The Giant’s Grave
The second, and in some ways more exciting site, has been named the ‘Giants’ Grave’. It’s an intriguing stone-cut cistern, carved directly into the bedrock and measures 12 feet long by 4 feet 6 inches wide and 2 feet deep, complete with a drain hole in the southwest corner. Its located just to the rear of the farm and is detailed on old maps as ‘Roman Cistern’. It’s use is uncertain, but speculation leads us to think it may have been for washing or tanning.
Another theory is way, way more interesting and may point to it being used for brewing.
Now I do like that idea. A roadside booza, coaching inn or stopping off point, like many others that used to exist along this route. Maybe the first batch of ‘Dog’ or ‘Broon Ale’ was knocked up here! I wonder if there were any drink or charioteering restrictions, especially during the run up to Saturnalia… “Blow into this bag, sir…”
Discovered inside the cist were several items, mainly animal bones, but also an iron object described as a ‘three-foot candlestick’. Oh… howld ern, a statue of Hercules was discovered further over, and a trident-like item found here. Coincidental? I think not. Maybe Hercules was a badly identified statue of Neptune. (I’m really pushing the boundaries of imagination here but hey ho, it’s my story.)
I can see someone in the Dark Ages looking for a stick to stir his brew in the cist and, seeing in the setting sun the glint of a metal trident on the statue, thinking, “Whey aye man, that’ll dee te stor me brew.”
Done Roman? Sit By My Fire
As if to underline the destruction of the fort and the robbery of stone and other items, we have this feature in a grand house nearby.
Rudchester Hall has an amazing fireplace that has two Roman altars as supports for the mantle, and an engraved centurial hearth stone which is no longer in situ as it was removed by one of the homeowners, its current location is unknown. Fortunately, its inscription was preserved and forms part of the database of Roman inscriptions of Britannia.
Legacy
We are so blessed locally with history dating back millennia. After the nomadic tribes settled into farming around BCE 4000, they have left their marks on our landscape.
We can only guess and postulate about most of it, as so much of Hadrian’s Wall has yet to be excavated in a modern context. But archaeology can only tell us so much. Sadly, many of the early ‘chop jobs’ done by well-meaning antiquarians destroyed so much stratified and datable evidence, that we may never know the full story. In their efforts and brinkmanship in beating the other to the next big find, they wrecked some of these sites.
However, it’s good to make your own theories. I’m an ageing engineer who owns a successful product design agency. Like most projects during feasibility studies, there are no bad ideas. So please bear with me as I vent my creativity with some of it. If my stories get you thinking and inspire you to get up and take a look yourselves at some of these places on our doorstep, or maybe even fire that creative spark to start writing your own theories, then it’s all good.
With love from the Crasterfarian xx
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Hi Crasterfarian
I very much appreciate your work and I think you have a great instinct to look below the surface of things. I agree that we shouldn’t limit ourselves and think there are ‘bad ideas’, unless they turn out to be through research, that is. But we must explore all ideas.
One of my theories is of a collective unconscious. That things come to the surface based on millennia’s old archetypes nested in the field of the psyche. So we instinctively may name or fashion new out of old, from little field memory waves in the quantum field behind our day to day universe.
Not a bad ‘idea’ and well supported in some physics theory and also Jungian psychology.
So when I read your piece, I was drawn to your theory of the beer making. The ancients such as the Celts revered the streams and springs and rivers as ‘of the goddess’. Isis and her consort were the living embodiment of the Nile. I have seen much to suggest that the Roman influences here were aligned with that ancient cult.
I know this is a romantic idea, but the waters were all to the ancients, and the beer so important to us all, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
In Egypt Isis was the water, the Nile, the sacred one. From her river everything that became ‘Egypt’ was from her veiled presence and authority.
She brought the inundation with Osiris/Orion, the Giant par excellence, when she appeared just over the southern horizon as a star, called Sothis. The Dog Star.
(I have also seen evidence of Orion-aligned monuments associated with Giants, graves and caves and sacred waters elsewhere in pagan Britain).
And we have come to call Broon, a bottle of Dog.
The derivation is clearly not from that source, but to do with gaan for a waalk wi the dog. However, it is interesting to consider that it may have arisen unconsciously also from the association between Isis the water and her Dog, which came from the sacred waters, through Osiris’s sacred grain; which is how the Egyptians perceived beer, and why it rather than wine was a royal tipple.
Does ancient memory persist in the collective psyche? Does Broon echo ancient archetypal thought, that rises to the surface again over millennia?
I like to think so :0)
All the best
Ivan
Is there any evidence to suggest that the trough/grave was Roman, or, indeed, ‘ancient’ at all? Could it not just be a water trough from later times with a plug-able drainage hole? I’m not sure how common these things are in the landscape, mind. I mean, are there many other examples?