As I write, my husband and I are spending a few days in the city of York. To my shame, and despite the fact that it has been on my bucket list for a considerable number of years, this is my first ever visit to this wonderful city. It is impossible not be awe-struck by York, which oozes tradition and culture from every corner. It also comes across as notably affluent throughout, which is perhaps unusual for a city; even the local Wetherspoons looks classy.
York feels like a place where multiple periods of history are jostling for your attenion. There are Viking streets and Georgian terraces, but York’s Medieval past and how this ties in with the history of the Church of England is most obviously dominant in its architecture. What is perhaps least obvious to the casual viewer is the city’s Roman origins, yet York was indeed one of the most important military and administrative centres in northern Britain, a legionary fortress and city called Eboracum.
A Roman presence in York began in the late first century AD. The ill-fated ninth legion, which has a mysterious history all of its own, established a large fortress on the north bank of the River Ouse in around the 70s AD. The fortress followed the distinctive plan of a typical Roman castra used across the empire: a defended rectangle with internal streets, command buildings, barracks, workshops and administrative areas. Over time, the original timber-and-earth defences were rebuilt in stone and a civilian settlement grew up adjacent to the military base. This, in fact, is the origin story of most Roman towns in Britain, and like all of them, York’s Roman origins can mostly be viewed piecemeal, woven into the fabric of what stands today.
York thrived continuously, from Roman times to the present. As the centuries slid by and when later builders needed stone, many Roman structures would have been pillaged for materials to support newer building projects. Most of the stones from the original fortress would have been removed and repurposed, but the Roman foundations remain: ramparts became the bases for medieval walls, Roman drains and sewers were incorporated into later systems and Roman roads turned into medieval carriageways and were given new names. My husband and I, both struck by the apparent affluence of the city, in which we found almost no disrepair, paused to ponder the single area of disuse we had come across: a large complex of buildings with boarded up windows. All became clear when we noticed a sign referencing an archaeological project attached to the railings around the area; it seems that a local building project must have come across something exciting beneath the surface, rendering the building works halted for now.
This indeed is what happened to the inn now called the Roman Bath pub in St Sampson’s Square. In around 1930, while work was being carried out in the cellar of the pub then called the Mail Coach Inn, which had suffered fire damage, builders uncovered a series of old stone structures and channels, which turned out to be part of a Roman bathhouse. Archaeologists confirmed that the remains were connected to the nearby garrison of Eboracum, and concluded that they were built by its soldiers for their own use. Thankfully, the man who owned the pub at the time was interested enough to preserve the remains, and today visitors can descend down to the cellar to see the original surviving hypocaust system. So, on entering the pub, you are greeted with the choice to visit the bar or the baths — or indeed, you can of course do both!
York has other places where one can poke one’s nose into its Roman origins. The Multangular Tower in the Yorkshire Museum Gardens is the most striking standing remnant of Roman occupation. It marks part of the south-west corner of the original legionary fortress, but what survives is a multi-period structure: it has Roman stone at its base, but evidences later reworkings (you can see the point of change in the picture below). There are also small stretches of the original Roman walls that are visible in the city, but York’s famous surviving city walls are of course Medieval. The Yorkshire Museum houses a collection of Roman artifacts, but to be honest it’s not exactly exciting unless you’re into looking at hunks of masonry. I know, I know. I’m a rubbish Classicist.
Given my day job, it was obligatory that to go looking for the Roman origins of York, despite my limited penchant for chunks of broken stonework. But to be honest, it is impossible not to be more intrigued by its Medieval history and by the things that mark out the city as unique: its glorious plethora of quirky ale houses, its equally notable profusion of churches, chapels and shrines and — perhaps most striking of all — its surviving city walls. Built originally to defend the city from rebellion, these structures were no longer used as a mechanism for defensive by as early as the 1800s. Parts of the walls from this point on became nothing more than a curiosity and began to be used as a walking route, so the surviving stucture was adapted to suit this new leisure pursuit. A new walkway was built inside the city walls to create a promenade and it is upon this walkway that you can survey the city today. In a world where it’s all too easy to convince ourselves that everything is always getting worse, I find it rather wonderful that what used to be an essential defence structure is now simply a place to pass the time and ponder.
