The Warm Room

A fine place it would have been to sit and chat and or play a board game . . . if you were a Roman soldier around 1700 years ago. 

We were in the North East again today on various missions, including picking fruit and veg at Piercebridge, and of course breakfast at our favourite café on the A66. On our way back we stopped at Binchester, Bishop Auckland, and the Roman Fort there. This was a huge fort, with civilian settlement, and was one of several on the main Roman road, now known as Dere Street, running east of the Pennines from York to Scotland.

There is quite a lot to see here, and there is excavation work going on all the time, but the most important part is the newly housed Bath House. In this photograph you can see the Warm Room, one of several rooms in the Bath House. It received heat from a hypocaust next door via the three arches in the basement. It is amazing to think that all this is almost as it was in Roman times. There are even footprints on the floor where someone walked on the new mortar . . . hard to see those without much wonderment. 

One of the reasons we went to Binchester was because last year we visited the remarkable Saxon church at Escomb, which is two miles away from Binchester. and we knew that a lot of the stone from the Roman fort was taken away to be used to build the church, once the Romans had left. I love that ancient recycling. 

(Funny how the spellcheck can't believe I was at a place called Binchester and keeps changing it to Winchester!)