Talking of staycations, I’ve recently returned from a long weekend in Colchester. It’s not somewhere that would normally be top of my list of places to visit – it’s a rather tired garrison town in Essex, a good five hour journey from Malvern. However, my favourite holiday company, Andante, were running one of their Study Days into the Roman history of Colchester, and it sounded just the sort of thing I’d enjoy.
Colchester Castle
The group of 20 of us met our tour manager and our archaeologist guide at 09:45 on Monday just outside Colchester Castle. This is the largest Norman keep in England, but (apart from its massive size) the first thing I noticed about it is that it is in the wrong place! There’s a pretty steep hill in the centre of Colchester – my hotel was on the top of it – and from a defensive point of view that’s where the castle ought to be. Instead, it was at the bottom of the hill. Odd. The second thing I noticed was that the masonry was stuffed full of what looked suspiciously like Roman bricks – they’re a very distinctive shape, like large tiles. Both observations were soon explained by our archaeologist guide, who gave us a short introductory talk on the history of the castle. It was in fact built on the massive foundations of the 1st century AD Roman Temple of the Divine Claudius – the most important religious site in Roman Britain. We were taken down into the vaults under the castle to see these massive concrete foundations of the temple. In an area with very little good quality building stone, the Normans decided to reuse these foundations and build their castle on top, re-using much of the stone and tile from the Roman town as building material. The Romans had in fact “got it right” defensively, and built their fort further up the hill.
Not that that helped them very much in AD60, when Boudicca and the Iceni went on the rampage and burned Colchester to the ground, massacring tens of thousands of people, many of whom had taken refuge in the temple. After a rather good pub lunch, we went down into the pub cellars and were shown an archaeological “section” preserved in the wall, which clearly showed a burned red layer – termed the “Boudiccan Destruction Layer” – tangible evidence of the fire and destruction. It was absolutely fascinating to see it. The Romans of course ruthlessly exacted their revenge on the Iceni, and rebuilt Colchester – this time with a defensive wall, which is still visible.
Starting gates of the Roman Circus
After lunch we walked around Colchester and saw I think just about every bit of visible Roman masonry. Our guide had a pocket full of keys, so we were taken into locked buildings and behind locked gates, to get privileged access to the remains of the theatre and parts of the Roman town that are closed to the general public. We also went exploring in the building site that was previously army land and is now being heavily redeveloped into housing as well as improved barracks for the soldiers. Archaeologists have recently identified there the first Roman chariot racing stadium, or circus, ever found in Britain. At the moment it’s in the middle of a chaotic building site, but the archaeologists are negotiating with the planners and developers to make sure that it will be as accessible as possible in the future.
Altogether, it was a really interesting day. I saw remains of Roman walls, city gates, town-houses, a theatre, the circus, an extremely early church, as well as lots of fascinating Romano-british artefacts in the castle museum and the Temple of Claudius. Our guide was previously the head of Colchester Museums, so he knew everyone and everything in and about Colchester, and was an ideal person to give us special access to the sites. In fact, my only complaint about the day was that there was so much to see, and it was all so interesting, that the day was rather rushed. I could have done with longer – and that’s not something I ever thought I’d say about Colchester!
