Name: Hidden Landscapes: The Romans in the Lake District
Uploaded: 2025-10-15T18:09:49.000Z
Duration: 5 min 44 s
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The Lake District has been celebrated for hundreds of years.

This dramatic landscape is a place where people can find relaxation, adventure and inspiration.

For 300 years, it was a frontier of the Roman Empire.

The Romans invaded Britain in AD 43 and and one of the ways in which they established their control was building a network of fortifications and roads.

In AD 90, they were pushing that network into the heart of the Lake District.

Today, English heritage cares for three forts that guarded a road that connected this area to the rest of the Roman Empire.

The garrisons in these forts were instrumental in controlling the local area, and

they also established communities that were going to be here for the better part of three centuries.

Raven Glass is a small coastal village on the western fringe of the Lake District.

But hidden in the woods is an amazing survival.

The beautifully preserved remains of a Roman bath house.

Now all that remains of a Roman fort and town.

The Romans built a fort at Ravenglass in about AD130, at a time when the Emperor Hadrian was consolidating the troublesome frontiers of his vast empire.

The soldiers stationed here monitored coastal trade and guarded a small natural harbour at the mouth of the River Esk.

And for over 250 years, they controlled access to the start of a road, the only viable route into the heart of the Lake District.

Originally, this bathhouse would have had spaces to change and a suite of warm and hot rooms where bathers could relax in the heat, and

also probably a cold room where they could refresh after working up a sweat.

Today, four of those rooms still stand to the astonishing height of 4 meters.

Bathing together in a bathhouse like this was a signature part of being a Roman here on the edge of Empire.

The garrison were going through the same routine as those living in forts, villas and towns across the Empire and even in Rome itself.

As we move further inland, we reach Hard Knock, one of the best preserved Roman forts in Britain.

By sighting a fort here in full view of people coming up the valley, the Romans were making a real statement of their power.

Hardenot was home to a garrison of 500 soldiers from Dalmatia in the Balkans.

They were protected by its imposing walls.

They practiced for war on a parade ground hewn out of the rock and escaped the cold in the fort's warm bathhouse.

Although the garrison had laboured hard to create a life here, the fort was abandoned after only about 20 years, probably due to the fact that after control had been established, Hardknot was no longer needed.

Despite Hardknot's short life, its sublime setting provokes the imagination.

It's so unexpected to discover a fort in such an inaccessible location.

And it's prompted painters and poets to really think hard about what life was like for the people that once lived here.

And you really come away filled with a sense of the richness of the Roman past.

We started at Raven Glass on the coast and followed the Roman road up into the Lake District via the Hard Knock Pass.

We're now standing at its eastern end at a fort called Ambleside.

The Romans built a fort here under hadrian in the AD120s, and

it's easy to see why they chose this location.

Not only is it connected by a road to Raven Glass, but

also at a point where that road connected to another that led to the north and eventually to the forts of Hadrian's Wall.

A traveller embarking upon a boat here would be able to sail down Lake Windermere, then by the river, moves southwards to the sea.

The fort can be hard to spot initially, as the remains of its outer walls lie buried.

So do the visible remains of its many barrack buildings and the large settlement that grew up around the fort.

However, the most important buildings in the fort, the buildings of the central range, are still really well preserved.

These were the most important buildings to the soldiers, and

they're the same buildings that were in every fort across the Empire.

The large granaries are testament to the complex logistics and trade networks that kept the garrison supplied.

The many rooms of the commander's once lavish house are a reminder that fine living was demanded by the Roman elite.

Even here at an outpost of Empire the Principia, the headquarters building still lies at the heart of the fort.

Soldiers would have come to its courtyard to receive orders or to mingle.

Behind that was a basilica where Roman law and religion were practiced.

And you can still step down into a sunken chamber.

A treasury that once held the soldiers pay, protected by the gods, the sacred shrine above.

These three forts really exemplify the lengths to which the Romans went to exert their rule over Britain.

Ambleside and Ravenglass in particular were thriving communities for the better part of three centuries.

The forts are great survivors remind us that a deep and rich Roman legacy here is waiting to be explored.

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Hidden Landscapes: The Romans in the Lake District

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