What’s on : Lectures

Redefining Roman Castleshaw: recent investigations at the Agricolan Fort site in Saddleworth

Lectures
Date
31 May 2016
Start time
7:30 PM
Venue
Tempest Anderson Hall
Speaker
Norman Redhead
Redefining Roman Castleshaw: recent investigations at the Agricolan Fort site in Saddleworth

Event Information

Redefining Roman Castleshaw: recent investigations at the Agricolan Fort site in Saddleworth

Norman Redhead, Greater Manchester Archaeological Advisory Service, University of Salford

The Agricolan Roman Fort at Castleshaw is situated in a spectacular location on the western slopes of the central Pennines. It was established to guard the main trans-Pennine highway linking the legionary fortresses of Chester and York. The site comprises a turf and timber auxiliary fort dated c AD 79-95, replaced by a turf and timber fortlet dated c AD105-120. The latter was thoroughly explored and consolidated by the Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit in the 1980s, but the earlier fort site has remained neglected and poorly understood since it was partly excavated in the 1960s.

Norman’s illustrated talk will set out the archaeological back ground to the site and explain the results of the recent community archaeology project which focused on the Agricolan fort. This work has demonstrated that the archaeology is much more complicated than previous excavators suggested, being multi-phased and with several unusual features.

Member’s report

Castleshaw Fort, one of 180 auxiliary Roman forts, guarded the Pennine route from Chester to York from AD79-95. Of turf and timber construction, it was probably too close to a similar fort at Slack to be viable. It was later replaced by a small fortlet which may have served as a wayside tax-gathering office, and perhaps overnight accommodation. The site was first found in 1751 and was much excavated in the 20th century. Work continues, including re-excavation of earlier digs. The fortlet ramparts were reinstated to show its ground plan and there are similar plans for the much larger fort site that surrounds it, once it has been fully excavated to find the sites of the buildings within it. The soil however is very acidic, destructive of organic material, so finds are scanty and mostly very small.

This well-illustrated, and very detailed lecture showed the sequence of changes from fort to fortlet. The site, including its surroundings, offers much of interest to Roman archaeology, but there are also remains of an earlier settlement of Beaker people, as well as of a later medieval one to be explored.

Carole Smith

For more information see Friends of Castleshaw at www.castleshawarchaeology.co.uk