ABSTRACT
Fragmentary as knowledge of the fort must always be, its discovery must be regarded as perhaps the outstanding event in the twentieth-century archaeo logical study of London. For not only is it new in itself; it sheds light on other aspects of the Roman city, and it had an important bearing upon sub sequent developments. But so far little has been said about its date. The time has now come when its position should be assessed in relation to the history and development of London as a whole. The first point to be made is that this discovery has no bearing on the
status of London as a military site at the time of the conquest just after a.d. 43. Limited as the amount of datable evidence is, it is quite definite on the point that the fort could not have been constructed until at least some time about the end of the first century a . d .: the earliest possible date is provided by the finding of a coin of Vespasian in a pit beneath the rampartbank of the fort a few yards north of the west gateway. The coin is some what worn, but appears to be of the emperor’s third consulship, dating therefore to a.d. 7 1 : in any case, its condition suggests that it had been in circulation for some time. The fort bank can hardly have been erected over the pit before about a.d. 80; other evidence from the defences-as with that referred to above for the internal buildings-indicates a rather later date, in the early second century. The association of the Cripplegate fort with the other military event to
affect London’s early history-Boudicca’s rebellion in a.d. 6 0 -1-is also ruled out by the same chronological difficulty, though here the interval between the two events is almost halved. A crucial element in the successfrom the native point of view-of the rising was the fact that no Roman troops were close at hand: they were away in the west and north, in remote theatres of war from which it was not possible to get them back in time to prevent the destruction of the cities of the south-east. Had the dates been right it would have been possible to argue that the fort was built to house a garrison as an insurance against a repetition of the Boudiccan incident. However this may be, London in the early second century a.d. must now
be visualised as made up of two parts. Centred on the eastern hill but spreading gradually from it was the redeveloping city, perhaps replanned
after the Boudiccan destruction. Away from the civil settlement, though the houses were creeping towards it, and apparently occupying an area which had previously carried some civilian occupation, the fort took up the slightly higher ground to the north-east. Fort and city reflect the separateness of military and civil which is a feature of Roman organisation in the frontier provinces, but the fort was so placed that it was within easy reach both of any part of the city and port, and of the most important roads that fanned out from the crossing of the Thames towards the interior of Britain. There are indeed hints that the axes of the fort were aligned on Ermin Street and Watling Street: but since the exact courses of the trunk roads are not known it is impossible to be certain on this point (p. 41). Of the many problems relating to the fort that are likely to remain un
solved one of the chief is that of its later history. It has already been observed that the higher levels in the deposits which might have been helpful here have nowhere survived. It is not therefore possible to say whether the fort continued a separate existence after it was incorporated into the city’s defences (p. 47) or whether its east and south walls were removed and its area made one with that of the civil settlement. The second of these alternatives is unlikely on general grounds and such evidence as there is seems to be against it. This relates entirely to the survival in modified form of the street plan of the fort (p. 29) which might be expected to have suffered more drastic alteration if it had gone out of use before the end of the Roman period, to reappear when after the lost years of the early dark ages the city was reoccupied. Only the fort ditch has so far yielded datable evidence that can be said to cover the full period of its effective existence. The filling of the ditch at the south-east corner (14) produced material ranging down to the late second or early third century suggesting that by this time this part of the fort’s defences at any rate had gone out of use. But the problem is to know whether the fort wall suffered in the same way. It may not be coincidence that the evidence from the ditch is consistent with the late second/early third century date which at present holds the field for the construction of the city wall (pp. 50-1). The new wall robbed the fort ditch on the east and south sides of any value that it ever had as a defensive obstacle, but its disappearance need not have affected the fort wall, which may have continued to separate military from civilian London, even while they were enclosed in the com mon defence of the city wall.
