New Discoveries At Norfolk's Roman Town

On the morning of Friday July 20, 1928, the crew of an RAF aircraft took photographs over the site of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St Edmund in Norfolk, a site which now lies in open fields to the south of Norwich.

The exceptionally dry summer meant that details of the Roman town were clearly revealed as parched lines in the barley. The pictures appeared on the front page of The Times on March 4, 1929 and caused a sensation.

Now, new investigations at Caistor Roman town using the latest technology have revealed the plan of the buried town at an extraordinary level of detail which has never been seen before.  The high-resolution geophysical survey used a Caesium Vapour magnetometer to map buried remains across the entire walled area of the Roman town.

Aerial view of Casitor.  The faint grid lines are remains of the Roman streets, underneath the earth.  © Mike Page

The research at Caistor is being directed by Nottingham University's expert in Roman Archaeology, Dr Will Bowden, with the help from David Bescoby and Dr Neil Chroston of the University of East Anglia, plus around 30 local volunteer members of the Caistor Roman Town Project.

The survey has produced the clearest plan of the town yet seen, confirming the street plan which was shown by previous aerial photographs.  It also shows the town’s water supply system - even detecting the iron collars connecting wooden water pipes, and the series of public buildings including the baths, temples and forum, known from earlier excavations.

The survey also showed that earlier interpretations of the town as a densely occupied urban area — given by reconstruction paintings — may be totally incorrect. Buildings were clustered along the main streets of the town, but other areas within the street grid seem to have been empty and were perhaps used for grazing or cultivation.

One of the most exciting new discoveries from the survey is what looks like a Roman theatre. Clear traces of a large semi-circular building have been found next to the town’s temples — the typical location for a theatre in Roman Britain.  The town is already well-established as the most important Roman sites in northern East Anglia, but the presence of a theatre is a significant indicator of the town's status, and of the cultural facilities available to its inhabitants.

Could this have been Boudica's home?

Caistor lies in the territory of the Iceni, the tribe of Boudica, the female Celtic Queen who famously rebelled against Roman rule in AD 60/61.  The survey revealed numerous circular features that apparently predate the Roman town.

View of Caistor Roman Town at ground level.

These are probably of prehistoric date, suggesting that Caistor was the site of a large settlement before the Roman town was built. This has always been suspected because of numerous chance finds of late Iron Age coins and metalwork.  But, until now, there has never been any evidence of buildings.

Historians are now asking two questions.  Was Caistor built on the site of an Iceni stronghold as retribution after Boudica’s rebellion, or was it built to favour a faction of the Iceni who had not taken part in the revolt?  It is hoped that future archaeological work will shed some light on these pertinent questions. 

End of life at Caistor

Life at Roman Caistor was thought to have ended in the 5th century AD, when Britain was abandoned by the emperor of the struggling Western Roman Empire.

However, the new survey clearly shows a large ditched enclosure that cuts the surface of the Roman street in the north-west corner of the site. Possible structures are visible within this enclosure.

The earlier discovery of middle Saxon coins and metalwork outside the west wall of the site, combined with the presence of two early Saxon cemeteries in the vicinity, suggests that these enclosures may be associated with continued life in the town after the Roman period.

Rather than simply being a provincial Roman town, Caistor may represent the development of a major settlement from the Iron Age until the 9th century AD.  Crucially, however, the site was ultimately superseded by medieval Norwich and reverted to green fields.

This is quite unlike other Roman towns that have the same history of long occupation but now lie buried beneath the modern towns of Britain and Europe.

This fortunate change of settlement location means that these same green fields at Caistor are a unique time-capsule that could give us vital clues to the complex processes through which our towns and cities developed. Funding is now being sought to test the results of the survey through excavation.

Web Links

Read more about the Caistor Roman Town project at: www.south-norfolk.gov.uk/venta

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