Patrick Comerford
During my visits to St Albans over the past week or two, I found myself walking in, out and through sites that are part of the Roman city of Verulamium.
The major ancient Roman route Watling Street passed through the city and Verulamium was the first major town for travellers heading north. Saint Alban, the first martyr in England, was executed in Verulamium during a Roman persecution of Christians in the third or fourth century.
Verulamium was located south-west of the present cathedral city of St Albans in Hertfordshire. A large part of the Roman city has still not been excavated, and is now lies beneath park and agricultural land.
Over the centuries, ploughing on the privately owned agricultural land has done much damage to the site. Parts of mosaic floors have been found on the surface, and ground penetrating radar studies show the outlines of buildings as smudges rather than clearly defined walls like those protected by the parkland.
Part of the Roman city has been built on, and Saint Michael’s Church, which I described on Sunday afternoon, was built in the 10th century on the site of the basilica, the headquarters of Roman Verulamium. Saint Alban may have been tried there before he was taken across the River Ver and executed on a hill outside the town walls, perhaps on the site of St Albans Abbey and the present cathedral.
Other parts of the Roman town were built on during the Middle Ages, but much of the site and its environs are now classified as a scheduled monument.
Before the Romans established their settlement at Verulamium, the area was already the location of a tribal centre belonging to the Catuvellauni, a Celtic people linked to Belgic Gaul. This settlement is usually called Verlamion.
The etymology is uncertain, but the name has been reconstructed as Uerulāmion, meaning ‘the tribe or settlement of the broad hand’ (Uerulāmos). In this pre-Roman form, it was among the first places in Britain recorded by name. The settlement was established ca 20 BCE by Tasciovanus, who minted coins there and died in the year 9 CE.
The Roman settlement of Verulamium was granted the status of municipium around 50 CE, giving its citizens ‘Latin Rights’, a lesser citizenship status than those of a colonia.
It grew to a significant town, and Verulamium was sacked and burnt on the orders of Queen Boudica of the Iceni in 61 CE. A black ash layer has been recorded by archaeologists, confirming the Roman written record.
Verulamium is mentioned in a Latin inscription on a wax tablet, dated to 62 CE, discovered in London during the Bloomberg excavations in 2010-2014.
The rebuilt town grew steadily. By the early third century, it covered an area of about 0.5 sq km (125 acres), behind a deep ditch and wall.
Verulamium had a forum, basilica and a theatre, much of which were damaged during two fires, one in the year 155 and the other ca 250. One of the few extant Roman inscriptions in Britain is found on the remnants of the forum.
The town was rebuilt in stone rather than timber at least twice over the next 150 years. The occupation by the Romans ended between 400 and 450 CE.
Few remains of the Roman city are visible today, but they include parts of the city walls, a hypocaust still at its original location under a mosaic floor, and the theatre, as well as items in the Museum.
The hypocaust, located within Verulamium Park, was an ancient underfloor heating system that was a marvel of Roman engineering and an example of the first indoor heating systems in Britain.
Roman hypocaust systems allowed hot air to circulate beneath the floor and through the walls of buildings. Floors were raised on brick columns or, as in this case, trenches were cut below the floor to allow the hot air through. The mosaic covering the hypocaust was made of tesserae or small cubes of cut stone or tile, set into a thin layer of fine mortar that was spread over a concrete floor.
The floor is thought to have been part of the reception and meeting rooms of a large town house, built ca 200 CE near Watling Street. The hypocaust was uncovered during excavations in Verulamium Park in the 1930s by Sir Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler. It was decided that it would be best to leave both the mosaic and hypocaust in their original Roman location and today they are on view in modern building open to visitors.
More remains under agricultural land nearby have never been excavated and for a while were seriously threatened by deep ploughing. Recent results of GPR (ground penetrating radar) studies have revealed more damage has been done to most buildings than originally thought, especially in the north-west part of the old Roman city.
The Roman theatre at Verulamium is said to be the only full excavated example of its kind in Britain. This was a theatre with a stage rather than an amphitheatre, and it stands within the grounds of the Gorhambury Estate.
By the eighth century, the Saxon inhabitants of St Albans were aware of their older Roman neighbour, which they knew alternatively as Verulamacæstir or Vaeclingscæstir, ‘the fortress of the followers of Wæcla.’
The city was quarried for building material to build mediaeval St Albans Abbey. Much of the Norman abbey was built from the remains of the Roman city, with Roman brick and stone visible.
St Albans Abbey, now St Albans Cathedral, is near the site of a Roman cemetery outside the city walls. It is not known whether there are Roman remains under the mediaeval abbey, and an archaeological excavation in 1978 did not find any Roman remains on the site of the mediaeval chapter house.
The Verulamium Museum, part of St Albans Museums, is in Verulamium Park, beside Saint Michael’s Church and the site of the Roman basilica. It was established following the excavations in the 1930s by Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Tessa Wheeler. The exhibits include large and colourful mosaics and many other artefacts, such as pottery, jewellery, tools and coins from the Roman period. Many were found in formal excavations, but some, including a coffin with a male skeleton, were unearthed nearby during building work.
Since much of the modern city and its environs are built over Roman remains, it is still common to unearth Roman artefacts several miles away. A complete tile kiln was found in Park Street almost 10 km (6 miles) from Verulamium, and there is a Roman mausoleum 8 km (5 miles) away, near Rothamsted Park .
