Roman Forts

What happened to the forts? This is an aerial photograph of Bremenium Roman fort at High Rochester in Northumberland. There’s not much to see now but once it was an important fort on the northern frontier of the Roman Empire, so important that the Emperor himself came to visit.
	Today if you walk around the fort all you can see are the remains of some of the walls. The Roman buildings have all gone.

Where did it all go to?
After the Roman army left Britain, in AD 410, there was no one left to repair the buildings and keep the water supply working. The forts became dangerous and unsafe to live in. Gradually the roofs fell in and the wooden doors rotted. The Anglo-Saxons usually built their towns away from the forts. They used wood and thatch to build their houses instead of stone and tile. Bywell Church Tower, Northumberland

The builders of Christian churches were among the first to realise that the forts could be useful. Many churches were built with stone from the Roman forts. It was easier than quarrying stone. That is what happened to Bremenium. The farmer built his house with stone from the fort. So did the local villagers.

The window arches and column in this church tower at Bywell, Northumberland came from a nearby Roman fort.

I have an altar in my barn. It is Roman. We think it came from the fort at Habitancum. On the front of the altar it has a man that is trying to catch a deer in the forest with a dog. On one side there is an axe and a knife, on the other side there is a stag in some trees. By James