Verulamium

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Watling Street, one of the great Roman roads through Britain, once ran directly through Verulamium. In medieval times the road was deliberately bent away, redirected to bring trade to the newer city of St Albans. Verulamium was about a day's walk from London, and for nearly four centuries it was a significant town in Roman Britain. What came after Rome is the stranger part of the story. A settlement that had its own name before Rome arrived would eventually be reduced to a source of building material. A philosopher took its name as his own noble title. Not all of it is gone. The rest is still being counted.

• 2. Verlamion

  ›

  Before Rome arrived, the Catuvellauni tribe had established a center on the land that would become Verulamium. They called it Verlamion. The name's origins are uncertain. Scholars have reconstructed it as *Uerulāmion, from a Brittonic root. The root carries a meaning something like "the settlement of the broad hand," built from the element Uerulāmos. Tasciovanus, a ruler of the Catuvellauni, minted coins at the site, marking it as a place of genuine political weight. In this pre-Roman form, Verlamion was among the first places in Britain to be recorded by name. That distinction predates its Roman chapter by generations.

• 3. Ash and Stone

  ›

  Around AD 50, Rome granted Verulamium the rank of municipium. That status carried what Roman law called "Latin Rights," a meaningful citizenship classification, though a step below the full standing of a colonia. The town grew. By the time Boudica of the Iceni led her rebellion in AD 61, Verulamium was significant enough to attract her forces directly. She ordered it sacked and burned. Archaeologists found the confirmation they needed in the ground. A layer of black ash, still present beneath the surface, matched the Roman written record exactly. The city was rebuilt and continued to grow. By the early 3rd century it covered about 125 acres, enclosed within a deep ditch and wall. A forum, a basilica, and a theatre stood within those walls. Fires in AD 155 and again around AD 250 caused serious damage. The town was rebuilt in stone rather than timber at least twice over the following 150 years. Roman occupation of Verulamium finally ended somewhere between AD 400 and 450. One of the few extant Roman inscriptions surviving in Britain came from the remnants of that forum. It is a fragment of the city's written record that outlasted the city itself.

• 4. The First British Martyr

  ›

  A man named Alban was living at Verulamium when he sheltered a Christian priest named Amphibalus from the Roman authorities. Alban was condemned to death in the 3rd century for doing so. Before his execution he adopted Amphibalus's faith, and by virtue of that death became the first British Christian martyr. St Albans Abbey was later founded on a hill outside the old Roman city. The site was chosen because of a belief that Alban had been executed or buried there. The abbey stood near a Roman cemetery, as was normal practice in the Roman world, placed outside the city walls. An archaeological excavation in 1978, directed by Martin Biddle, searched for Roman remains beneath the medieval chapter house and found none. The modern city of St Albans takes its name from that martyr, a recognition that persisted long after Verulamium itself had faded from view.

• 5. A Contract in Wax

  ›

  In London, between 2010 and 2014, archaeologists from the Bloomberg excavations uncovered a wax tablet that named Verulamium directly. The tablet was dated with unusual precision. It records the consulship of Publius Marius Celsus and Lucius Afinius Gallus, placing it on the 21st of October, AD 62. The writer was a man named Marcus Rennius Venustus. He recorded that he had contracted with a carrier named Gaius Valerius Proculus to transport 20 loads of provisions from Verulamium to London. The goods were to arrive by the Ides of November, which fell on the 13th of that month. The agreed transport charge was a quarter of a denarius per load. The tablet is a commercial document rather than a monument. Its value lies precisely in that ordinariness. It shows Verulamium as a functioning trade hub, already doing business with London in AD 62. The penalty clause, carved into the wax at the end, survives only in fragments. What consequences Marcus Rennius Venustus would have faced for a late delivery are now lost.

• 6. Quarried Away

  ›

  Much of the Norman abbey at St Albans was built from stone and brick taken directly from Verulamium's ruins. Roman material is still visible in the abbey's walls today. The Saxon inhabitants of St Albans were still aware of their ancient neighbour as late as the 8th century. They called it Verulamacaestir. H. R. Loyn described their alternative name, Vaeclingscaestir, as "their own hybrid." That name translates as "the fortress of the followers of Waecla." David Nash Ford identifies the community as Cair Mincip, meaning "Fort Municipium." Nennius listed it among the 28 cities of Britain in his History of the Britons. Within the old city walls, Sir Francis Bacon, the philosopher and statesman, built a small house he called Verulam House. The 17th-century diarist John Aubrey described it as "a refined small house." No trace of it remains.

  When Bacon was ennobled in 1618, he chose the title Baron Verulam, a direct reference to the ancient city. He died without heirs in 1626, and the barony became extinct. In 1790 the title was revived for James Grimston, a Hertfordshire politician, later made Earl of Verulam. His descendants still hold that title today. Aubrey noted: "At Verulam is to be seen, in some few places, some remains of the wall of this Roman Citie."

• 7. Theatre and Ground

  ›

  Mortimer Wheeler and his wife Tessa Wheeler conducted excavations at Verulamium during the 1930s. The findings from that work form the core of the Verulamium Museum. The museum sits on the edge of Verulamium Park, on ground that once held the forum, and is run by the district council. Its most celebrated holdings are large and colourful mosaics from the Roman period, along with pottery, jewellery, tools, and coins. A coffin still containing a male skeleton was found nearby during building work and is now part of the collection.

  The theatre at Verulamium has been claimed as the only fully excavated example of its kind in Britain. The distinction matters: this was a theatre with a stage, not an amphitheatre. Most other Roman performance spaces in Britain, including the one at Camulodunum, were amphitheatres. The Verulamium theatre is managed by the Gorhambury Estate, which owns the land. A hypocaust, the underfloor heating system used in Roman buildings, survives in situ beneath a mosaic floor. Sections of the old city walls are also visible, except for a stretch that was protected from the start by the River Ver.

  Ground-penetrating radar surveys have revealed a troubling picture of what lies beneath the agricultural land. Buildings in the north-western part of the old city now register as smudges in the radar rather than clear wall outlines. Ploughing on the privately owned farmland has caused serious damage. Parts of mosaic floors have been found on the surface, testament to how close the buried city has come to destruction.

  A complete tile kiln was found in Park Street in the 1970s, roughly 6 miles from the ancient city. A Roman mausoleum stands near Rothamsted Park, about 5 miles away. The asteroid 4206 Verulamium carries the city's name into the solar system, a more durable monument than anything the city itself has left behind.