1224 Abeia and Rivera project

This brings me to yesterdays completed work on the Arbeia Roman Fort.

Times Past

In the whole of the North East of England, the vast geographical area of Northumberland, Durham and 'Cleveland' there are estimated to have been about a quarter of a million people in 1800(2).

One hundred and seventy fives years later the population had reached two and three quarters of a million, eleven fold.

This growth, with large numbers migrating from Scotland and Ireland, was created by the need for fuel, transport and manufacturing machines for the Empire: Coal, Steel and Ships. Over half the population was concentrated, as it is now, within the comparatively small area around the river Wear and the City of Sunderland and between the towns on the banks of the Tyne, Tynemouth and North Shields, South Shields, Jarrow and Hebburn, Wallsend, Gateshead and the accepted regional capital city of Newcastle. For the past two decades a half marathon has been run from the centre of Newcastle to the Coastal Park at South Shields(3).

Excluding the Industrial Revolution, the region is known for the Roman Wall, the chronicling of early Christianity, the City of Durham and its many and magnificent Castles. By one of those quirks of circumstance, value for money opportunities and sudden availability, I bought a house within a couple of streets of the visible remains of the Roman fort and main supply depot for the troops which guarded the wall built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. I was about to purchase a house a mile away when the estate agent rang to say that the individual who had made an offer had dropped out.

The fort is now known by its earliest recorded name Arbeia (4) in a 4^th/5^th century work, Notitia Dignitatum, and is thought to be Latinised Aramaic, the known language of the last attested unit stationed at the fort. It has also been known as Caer Urfa with Caer a Welsh word meaning fortified place and then in the Middle Ages as Scheles which is a middle English term for a groups of shelters.

The fort was built during the reign of Hadrian about AD 125 to guard what was then a small sea port below the hill, which was once an island created by a tributary of the Tyne which ran down what is now the main shopping area, a night life district and street of small hotels and restaurants onto the coast, called Ocean Road. At this time it was an Auxiliary Calvary Fort with units of 500 men. "In AD 208 the Emperor Septimus Severus launched a series of campaigns against the troublesome Caledonian Tribes". The function of the fort was then changed first into an auxiliary infantry cohort and then extensively rebuilt with additional barrack blocks. It is said to have fallen into disuse for a time and then developed as a store to supply the troops of the seventeen forts guarding the wall, using the Tyne river to transport. It contained the only stone made granary found in Great Britain and as attested by the stone built structure of the West Gate, its building would have required specialist engineers.

The fort was abandoned about AD 400 when Emperor Honorius advised the British people that we had to look to our own defences. Research has shown that cavalry units stationed at the fort came for Hungry and Spain and then by infantry troops from Gaul, although perhaps only half the 1000 strength were stationed because only accommodation blocks for 500 have been identified. The last known Roman unit was of Syrian bargemen from the River Tigris in the Middle East. Of contemporary interest among the Gods worshipped at the fort were the Spirits of Conservation.

The spirits of conservation were dormant for much of the Industrial Revolution and it is only during the last quarter of a decade that attention was given to the site, first with building the extraordinarily authentic reconstruction of the West Gatehouse, and only this year the more recent recreation of the centurion's house was completed as a contrast with the accommodation available for his eighty men.

The following two photographs do not do justice to the potential of this important site which is tucked away on the brow of the hill surrounded by large three storey Victorian terracing. The proposal to build a visitor's centre and observation tower on the adjacent hillside park overlooking the mouth of the river towards the beacon remains of Tynemouth Priory and Castle has met with understandable self interested opposition by some local residents, and admittedly my preference, if there is to be some skyline structure, is for a giant sculpture of a miner and a shipyard worker to rival that of the Angel of the North, perhaps together with a Centurion they could be made to support the tower!