In or around the year 42 AD, Cunobelin, leader of the British tribe known as the Trinovantes, died. Cunobelin was probably the most powerful king in Britain and his death resulted in an inevitable power struggle over who should succeed him. The Romans seized the opportunity and invaded Britain, making their priority the capture of Camulodunum (now known as Colchester). So, they decided on a plan to keep a watchful eye over their new subjects, by building a fortress on a nearby hill. They appear to have met little resistance from the Brits - but they must have expected some sort of retaliation. Within a very small time period, probably because the indigenous Brits showed that they wanted a peaceful life, it was soon de-fortified and became a colonia - a place of peace, where retired Roms could live and enjoy the land that was now theirs.

Colchester town centre (as we know it today) was once known as the Colonia Victricensis (City of Victory). Whilst it started off as a legionary fortress, it was as an unfortified colonia that it was attacked in the year 60 or 61 AD and destroyed by Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni. I will be frequently referring to the word 'colonia' for these reasons.

The colonia took the British name of the surrounding area, the whole becoming known as Camulodunum. This, of course, eventually became now known by its current name of Colchester (colne ceastre - fortress on the Colne).

MAP

The map shows a simplified layout of the Roman colonia from around 200AD.

Hopefully, from this map, you will be able to identify the various gates in the walls and therefore the Balkerne Gate on the west, East Gate on the East, linked by the Via Principale (our modern day High Street). Also the North Gate on the north and Headgate on the south east, linked by modern day North Hill and Head Street. Also the South Gate where present day St Botolphs Street passes through, leading south toward the circus.

(Further to the south, not shown on this map lies modern day Gosbecks, where, before the Roman invasion, lived the British people of the Trinovante tribe. We will visit there as an addition to this tour, at the end of the page.)

I will use this map to indicate (with red dots) where we are as we walk around the modern day town, where I will show you the evidence of what has survived from Roman times.

 

1 - THE TOWN HALL 

We start our tour at our modern day own Hall, in what would have been the centre of the colonia, and, coincidentally, the probable location of the principia, the main headquarters of the Roman colonia. The modern day High Street follows the original line of the Roman street that would have been laid out by the Roms in or around the year 43AD in an almost perfect east/west alignment. They had a 'fresh canvas' to work with.

At that time there would have been no other buildings with the only pre-Roman archaeological finds being burials and assorted pottery dating as far back as 2500 BC, and pre-history flint tools and arrowheads, etc. We assume that, to the Iron Age Brits, this would have been a sacred place where their ancestors were buried and a high place that could be seen in the distance.

The Roms built their town here because it was a logical next step to the fortress that they built here to 'keep an eye' on the unpredictable 'Brits' over in Camulodunum (modern day Gosbecks). The surrounding landscape would have been forest - the essential fuel for cooking and, perhaps more importantly, for the making of bricks and roofing tiles for buildings.

The colonia was built on a hill, at a height above sea level of some 30 metres. In so doing, the Roms' main problem was a lack of water! That is why the wise old Brits lived at Gosbecks, where they had plenty of fresh water and could easily defend themselves. The new Roman occupiers needed to carry or convey, by some means, water to the colonia - something that must have been a major headache for them.

The Conquering Romans

The Brits of Camulodunum

So, let us set off to second Roman point of interest.

2 - THE ROMAN THEATRE

To reach the Roman Theatre in Maidenburgh Street, we must walk down West Stockwell Street, to the side of the Town Hall, passing the first public library and the St Runwalds church graveyard on the left, until we reach St Martin's Church on the right hand side. A little further down the road on the right is the Taylor house where the nursery rhyme 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star' was written. Stop a while to look at the church and note the use of the recycled Roman period materials. Remember that Essex has no natural building stone, something that the Roms found to their cost. Long after they left Britain, Colchester had fallen into decay. However, the Normans found a ready made supply of building materials in the Roman debris and a new life was given to the town with the building of our Norman and medieval churches and, of course, our magnificent castle - as well as many other buildings and structures.

To the left of the church is a small alleyway know as Quaker Alley, in memory of the many nonconformists of the area at one time and an introduction to what we know as the Dutch Quarter. Walk to the end of the alley and you will find yourself in East Stockwell Street. This is an area once inhabited by Flemish weavers, who had fled persecution on the continent and found sanctuary in Colchester. Turn left and then first right, along Helena Road?, with the Stockwell Chapel on your left. On the right you will find an open grassed area that is a Quaker burial ground, no longer in use but preserved for posterity.

(If you would like to know more about this area, please take the multi-period Virtual Guided Tour of Colchester which starts here.)

At the end of this road you come to Maidenburgh Street, with the St Helena Chapel on your right hand side. During roadworks in the 1980's a Roman period structure was discovered, on top of which the chapel was built. Upon further archaeological investigation it was found that this was a Roman theatre.

 

The above picture looks south up Maidenburgh Street with St Helena's Chapel in the centre. Picked out in the block paved road surface are blocks of different colour to mark the location of the theatre foundations below ground level. Further up, a building has been rebuilt in order to display these foundations. The picture below shows how the theatre was laid out. Colchester is unique in being the only place in Britain to have two Roman theatres - the other being at Gosbecks.

The following picture shows how we think the theatre might have looked. In keeping with the relaxed and unwarlike image that the Roms wanted to convey to the Brits, for the colonia, a place of culture and learning, a place where its soldiers could retire in peaceful surroundings, theatres were where plays or oratory could be seen and heard.

Not to be confused with an amphitheatre, where gladiatorial battles, putting Christians to death, or other such barbaric practices, were the norm.

No amphitheatre is known in Colchester. But who knows? One day perhaps, one may be found, to confound the theory of a peaceful colonia. 

 So, let us set off to our third Roman point of interest.

3 - THE TEMPLE OF CLAUDIUS and the CASTLE GROUNDS

Close to St Helena's Chapel, on the opposite side of the road, is another alleyway. Go down the alley and you will find a small gateway that leads you into the upper castle park. Walk up the incline toward the castle and, after a short distance, you will see a section of wall to the left of the path. This is a section of the Roman wall that once surrounded the Temple of Claudius, built to glorify the name of the Emperor Claudius. The Normans built their castle's defensive wall over this Roman wall and we assume that it passes into the earth bank to the left. Subsequent landscaping has removed much of this Roman boundary wall but, a short way away, to the right of this picture, hidden in the undergrowth, is a section of a drain belonging to the Roman period, a reminder of the advanced technology that the Roms brought with them to uncivilised Britain.

Go here to get an idea of what the Romans gave to us.

In the foreground, a section of the wall that would have surrounded the Temple of Claudius

A view of one of the many Roman drains that have been discovered. This one points directly at the castle, suggesting that it was part of the temple's drainage system and leading north to discharge outside the colonia wall.

The temple was destroyed in 60/61 AD by Queen Boadicea's army, when, according to the Roman commentator Tacitus, 30,000 Romans lost their lives. Many had barricaded themselves inside the temple in the vain hope that they might survive the attack. Today, archaeologists regularly find a burnt layer in the earth when digging down - an indicator of the date and the event.

We are now in Roman territory! Our splendid Norman Castle is built on top of the Temple of Claudius and you can find out more about this here.

Of course, the castle is our principal museum too and there is an extensive collection of Roman period exhibits. Whilst we are not venturing inside the castle during this tour, please go here to see some of the exhibits that have been discovered over the years. To give you a little taste, you can go into the entrance hall of the castle and see a real Roman mosaic called the Beryfield mosaic. Beryfield was an area quite close by, between East Hill and the new Visual Arts Facility (VAF). When archaeologists uncovered it in the 1920's they discovered a skeleton laid on it. Whether this was evidence of foul play, we shall never know.

This is what is known as the Beryfield mosaic, located in the entrance hall of the castle.

....and a close-up of one of the mythical creatures.

As we stand looking at the section of wall, just imagine how this area might have looked some 1900 years ago. The temple would have been rebuilt after the destruction by Boadicea. The temple precinct would have been a place where one could relax, talk to friends. We have no way of knowing exactly what was there but it must have been a focal point in Roman Colchester. If we turn left, down the path, we will see the Victorian bandstand. Before we get to the bandstand, there is an area that has been left exposed by the archaeologists. This is the remains of a Roman town house, of which there must have been many. The red clay tessarae of the floor and stones marking where the building's walls once were, are well displayed and give us an idea of how a typical house might have been laid out. You may think it surprising that such evidence of the past is open to the weather like this.

The remains of a c200AD Roman house. Can you see the town's Roman wall in the distance?

From this position, what is left of the 2800 metre long Roman colonia wall can be clearly seen at the foot of the hill that has since become part of our award winning Castle Park. As part of the Camulos Roman Trail of Colchester, you can do a virtual tour of our walls here. But don't forget to come back for the rest of this tour, where we will be visiting the remains of the only Roman circus in Britain.

Turning back on ourselves we now return to the Norman castle to see more evidence of the Roman period. Apart from the extensive use of Roman materials for the building of the castle, there is very little evidence of the Roman period. After the Roms left Britain around 411 AD, the colonia would have gone into rapid decline. With the collapse of effective government, law and order, a workable money system, etc. life within the colonia was unsustainable. Without commerce, a profit could not be earned and life took a far less comfortable turn. In order to eat, food had to be grown rather than purchased. History does not record how people fared but we must assume it became a case of survival of the fittest and law of the sword. This was what we now know as the Dark Ages. The colonia would have simply decayed, only to be repopulated sporadically by the Saxons, the Danes and, eventually, the Normans; the latter using the 600 year old Roman debris to build their buildings - many of which survive today. The strategic importance of the town walls was recognised however and they were preserved and repaired over the centuries; most of them surviving to this day.

Let's make our way eastwards around the east side of the castle and across to the children's play area, passing by our Royalist martyr's obelisk. As we pass the castle, look for evidence of hypercaust pillars that were used by the Normans in building the castle. The higher status Roman houses had underfloor heating. The floors were raised up by about 500mm on pillars made from brick tiles. The space created was then used to convey heat from a fire to hollow wall tiles that acted as chimneys. This passage of heat warmed the whole building, especially the floors.

Can you see the hypercaust tile pillars laid on their side in the castle wall?

Beneath these grates in Hollytrees Meadow are some very well preserved Roman drains.

On, what we refer to as, Hollytrees Meadow, close to the children's player, can be seen two metal grates set into the grass. Below these grates is further evidence of Roman drains, these being in remarkably good order and man sized. They lead down to Duncan's Gate to the north, in the colonia wall. The archaeologists are undecided as to whether this drain system is part of a Roman mithraic temple structure. A strange type of frog lives in these drains!

4 - TOWARDS SOUTH GATE

Next we will turn back toward the castle and walk south, out of the Castle park via the Cowdray gate by the war memorial. Crossing the High Street and walking to the left of All Saints Church (now our Natural History Museum), we are in Queen Street. Walk down Queen Street and note the magnificent new structure that is nearing completion to your left through the gap that was our bus station but soon to be our Visual Arts Facility (we need a better name for it than that). This street follows the line of one of the original Roman streets of the colonia and takes us through where once would have stood St Botolphs Gate or South gate - or whatever name the Roms may have given it. The gate was removed for good in the 17th century, probably due to decay and inconvenience for ever larger road vehicles - and perhaps as a result of damage during the Siege of Colchester of 1648.

I have nothing that is Roman to show you on this route but let us take the road on the right named Vineyard Street in what has become St Botolph's Street, to go and see a section of our Roman wall. After about 100 metres, on the right, we see that Vineyard Street opens out into a car park. To the right can be seen a fairly messy section of the Roman wall, due to centuries of the presence of various buildings built into and onto the wall, some sections having lintels from fireplaces and other repaired breached. Following the line of the wall. near to the modern period stone steps that lead up on to what would have been the wall ramparts (now Eld Lane), we can see a restored and well preserved barrel vaulted Roman drain outlet. This is just one of many outlets that would have existed in the wall. Your would need to follow the wall walk to see other evidence of drains. A little further on from that is a much larger breach in the Roman wall that was made by the builders of our modern day Lion Walk Precinct. But let's not get distracted by detail as this is covered by the Roman Wall trail elsewhere on Camulos.

 If we we briefly take a detour up the above mentioned steps and into Lion Walk, we can see a modern plaque on a shop wall, describing a lion like creature that was part of a Roman mosaic found nearby by archaeologists.

So, back to Vineyard Steps and outside the town walls, to continue the trail. Vineyard Street is a modern naming and does not (sadly) refer to an area used by the Roms to grow the grape. This was, at one time, Colchester's red light area! A renaming of the area must have helped with its reputation.

 5 - TOWARDS THE CIRCUS

Keep walking westwards along the line of the wall until you come to Scheregate Steps. This is where another breach in the wall occurred, probably in the Middle Ages, when a Roman drain was opened up to produce a walk through for workers at the nearby St John Abbey. The steps demonstrate yet again the difference in height between inside the walls and outside them. This would have been around 6 metres in Roman times but later life has reduced this somewhat to a gentle slope and a few steps.

Opposite Scheregate Steps, to our left, is a road imaginatively named Abbeygate Street. Turn down this street and walk under Southway via the underpass towards St Johns Abbey Gate. In the underpass you will see modern murals depicting some historical themes. You will see a replication of the tombstone of a Roman centurion, Marcus Favonius Facilis, the original of which can be seen in the castle. He died around 100AD. The wallpaper of this web page shows a Roman auxiliary soldier by the name of Longinus Sdapeze, whose incredibly well preserved tombstone is also to be seen in the castle. Other murals in the underpass show the detail shown on a pre-Roman period British coin with an ear of corn (the source of the great wealth of the region that so attracted the Romans here) and the letters CAMU (short for Camulodunum, believed to be the British name for Colchester at that time).

Emerging from the underpass, turn left and walk up the hill for about 200 metres, passing the abbey gateway over on our left. We are now in Flagstaff Road. Before the junction that we see ahead, about 50 metres ahead, we cross over the northern section of the Roman circus that was identified by archaeologists at the end of 2004. This came about as a result of the army relocating to another part of the town and selling the army land (since Victorian times) to developers. As part of legal requirement of the sale, archaeological assessments had to be done prior to any building works, in case anything of historic importance was hidden. Archaeologists had discovered various bits of a Roman period structure in past years but no significance was attached to the finds until then. On finding yet another piece of the structure that seemed to line up with other previous finds, somebody remarked on what might be the worst thing that could be found in Colchester from a property developer's perspective. Charioteers? A Roman circus perhaps. Bingo! Gradually it had dawned on the archaeologists that what they had unearthed were the remains of the only Roman circus known in Britain. Over the following period, more and more of the circus was discovered and the rest - as they say - is history.

The illustration below shows a view of how the circus probably looked from the Emperor Hadrian's period circa 175 AD. Perhaps Hadrian himself had ordered the construction of the circus.

At the junction of Flagstaff Road and Circular Road North, stop and imagine how things once were at this position. From your right, some 200 metres away, were the eight starting gates of the circus where up to eight teams of four horse pulled chariots (quadrigae, or biga fro two horses) started, all aiming for the best line that they could get to race around the 440 metre long circuit with its 800 metre lap. To your left, about another 200 metres or so, was the other end of the circus where the charioteers thundered around a turning point and back toward the starting gates and to complete their first lap. To get a feeling for this take a little detour and try a clip from YouTube that shows the incredibly filmed race in the film Ben Hur, with Charlton Heston as Judah Ben Hur, racing around the biggest Roman circus ever built, the Circus Maximus in Rome, Italy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpoKdPNM10M

Of course, that was Hollywood. The reality would have been no less exciting, but the chariots would have been much lighter and with no nasty pointy bits on the wheels to nobble the opposition's chariot. This was the Formula One racing equivalent of Roman times with the most successful charioteers earning huge sums of money and being hailed as gods in their own right. It must have been incredibly dangerous for horse and man and would have been watched by an audience of tens of thousands of people. Standing at this junction you would have been mown down, so with that thought in mind, let us move on. Turn right along Circular Road North (we must rename that road to reflect what we now know about its past history) we will walk for about 100 metres until we reach a bend in the road, where one of the turning points in the central spina of the circus once stood (archaeologists found its foundations still intact). Slightly ahead to the left can be seen a grassy mound in the grassed area.

Walk to the mound and go to the right hand side of it. The mound was raised on a section of the circus to both simulate the type of banking used for the circus walls and to enable a mosaic that had been produced by local schoolchildren, to be displayed. The following picture shows the mosaic soon after it was set in place. Eventually it is hoped to move it into the new circus interpretation building.

 

The following picture shows the design of the mosaic. It is a wonderful piece of work and shows how (it is thought) the circus would have been laid out.

 

Here are some scenes from ancient monuments that depict some of the features of the Roman circus. Note the charioteers hooked knife in his webbing, there in case of emergency to cut himself free of the reins that could drag him to his death. Also details of the various gates of the circus.

Here follows an aerial view of how the circus lies in relation to modern day buildings and roads. Some 1400 years after the Roms left Britain, the army (in the 1870's) built their barracks in this area. In the 2000's the army moved on and sold the land to developers. When it was discovered that a Roman circus lay below the soil, a Scheduled Ancient Monument classification was quickly slapped on it, thus ensuring that no harm could be done to it, or anything built on top of it. This was a serious inconvenience to the developer. Local people started a campaign to bring the land back into public ownership. They quickly met the problem that the circus strating gates lay in the gardens of the old Sergeant's Mess building (far left in the picture below) and the developer would not sell the garden on its own. So, the campaign set to work in late 2009 to raise the £750,000 that the developer wanted for the building and its garden. See www.romancircus.org for details of where they are currently at with their appeal.

 

 The following picture shows how, Pete Frost, a local artist, saw the landscape being at the time of when the circus was built. The circus lies in the foreground east west and parallel to the colonia.

 The following newspaper clipping shows just one of the fascinating finds that were uncovered by archaeologists. 

Before we move on, reflect on the fact that, as of February 2010, when this page was created, over 5 years since the circus was discovered, there is no indication for visitors to tell them where the circus lies. The road is named 'Circular Road North'. What might it take to get the road name changed to 'Roman Circus Way'?

6 - THE ROMANO-CHRISTIAN CHURCH

Having visited the only Roman circus site in Britain, we will now walk back towards the colonia and visit the earliest Christian church in Britain. Taking the passageway through from the circus site to Butt Road (so named because of the rifle shooting butts that were created for the military during Victorian times in this area), we turn to the right (heading north) back into town and past two of our traditional pubs, the Fat Cat (previously the Royal) and the Dragoon. At the foot of the hill, on the left, you will see our Police Station.

(We also visit this in Part of our visual tour.)

Just outside the Head Gate area of the Roman Colonia, adjacent to the present day Police Station, was discovered the remains of a church like structure, dateable to AD 320 - 340. The Romans officially became Christians in 313 and we therefore claim that this church is the earliest known Christian church in Britain. In Roman times, the dead were not allowed to be buried within the walls and a vast area in the vicinity of this church was used for both post and pre-Christian Roman period burials, identifiable by whether they were cremations or inhumations, random position of Christian east west orientation. Literally hundreds of graves have been excavated by the archaeologists, mainly in the 1970's, although many must have been destroyed in the Victorian period when the area was quarried for sand and the land used for buildings.

 

7 - THE BALKERNE GATE and WEST WALL

Let us leave the church site now and head for the last part of our Colchester Roman trail. This has not been a long tour as the centuries that have passed since the Roms left Britain, around 411AD, have led to most of their structures being destroyed and built over. A lack of building materials meant that their structures were plundered and robbed out for other uses. Early recycling!

So let us cross over Southway (a road built to remove traffic congestion in our town!!!!) and walk up to Headgate (probably the later Roman period main town entrance) and turn left along Crouch Street, past the oldest pub in town, the Bull. We are still outside the walls at this point, the wall being hidden behind the shops to our right. At the end of Crouch street we turn right and, after a short while we see what is left of our Roman wall after centuries of decay and vandalism. As we wander northwards towards the Hole in the Wall pub, built on top of the Balkerne Gate - another Roman gateway, but with a difference - stop a moment at the few steps that serve a breach in the wall, leading to St Mary at the Walls church (now St Mary's Arts Centre). Look at the section of wall that has been broken out and you should be able to see what is left of the Roman drain that made the destruction and creation of this walkway so much easier. You will need to do the wall tour here to learn more about this. Don't forget too to visit the Gosbeck's Archaeological Park here, where the Roman emperor Claudius and his legions came in 43 AD to take the surrender of eleven British kings.

As I said, there may not be many Roman period structures left to see - apart from our walls, a few drains and the Christian church foundations. Hopefully soon, our circus foundations too will be on display.

But look around you as you do the various tours of Colchester. Roman materials everywhere! In our Saxon/Norman/medieval churches and boundary walls, our Norman castle and various other odd locations.

....and so we reach the Balkerne Gate at the crest of the hill. This is the best preserved Roman gateway in Britain - but you will need to do the wall tour to learn more of this. If you still want more, continue your Roman tour by walking the Roman walls of Colchester here.

For now, I bid you farewell. Please visit Colchester in person one day and enjoy a unique heritage experience.

Where else in Britain can claim such a heritage as that which we have in Colchester?

Your tour guide has been

Sdapeze

Currently we are running walking tours to raise awareness of the Save Our Roman Circus appeal.

These are on the last Sunday of each month from 11.00am. Contact us for more details.

romancolchester@aol.com

 With grateful thanks to Barrie Pearce for his delightful Roms and Bits animations and clipart.

To revisit any part of this series of tours and trails, please click on any of the following:

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To see more of Colchester's heritage sites, please explore the following links:

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