Vindolanda

Listen first. Wind moves over open grass, sheep call from the far slopes, and a trowel scrapes against wet earth somewhere below you. The ground here is soft, often damp, and it smells of turf and cold stone. Around you, low grey walls run in neat lines across a green hillside in Northumberland. They look modest at first. But under your feet lies one of the richest Roman sites in Europe. This place is Vindolanda.

Vindolanda was a Roman fort and the civilian settlement that grew beside it. It stands just south of Hadrian's Wall, the great frontier that once ran across northern Britain. Here is the first surprise. Vindolanda is older than the Wall. Soldiers were already stationed here in the late first century, guarding a Roman road called the Stanegate. The Stanegate ran east to west across the country. Hadrian's Wall was built a little to the north some decades later.

The name Vindolanda is Celtic, not Latin. It is often explained as meaning something like the white enclosure or the white fields. Picture this hillside in winter, pale with frost, and the name makes quiet sense. The Romans often borrowed local names for their forts. They kept the sound of the landscape, even as they changed it. So the name itself is a small trace of the people who lived here before the soldiers came.

The ruins you see are not from one single fort. Over the centuries, the Roman army demolished and rebuilt the fort here again and again. Archaeologists count at least nine forts, one on top of another. Early forts were built of timber and turf. Later forts were built of stone. Each time, the builders levelled the old site and laid new floors on top. This habit, repeated for hundreds of years, created the conditions for an extraordinary discovery.

The lower levels sit in wet, heavy clay. Very little air reaches them. Without air, the bacteria that normally destroy wood, leather and cloth cannot do their work. So objects that rot away on almost every other Roman site survive here. Excavators have found leather shoes by the thousands, some small enough for children. They have found combs, textiles, wooden tools, and even a wig made from moss. The soil here works almost like a sealed time capsule.

The most famous finds are the Vindolanda tablets. In 1973, the archaeologist Robin Birley uncovered thin slivers of wood, about the thickness of a postcard. At first they looked like rubbish. Then faint ink marks appeared on the surface. These were letters and records, written by Romans living at the fort. They were the first of hundreds of tablets found here. Many of the originals are now kept at the British Museum in London, and some are displayed in the museum on this site.

The tablets show ordinary life in remarkable detail. Soldiers ask for leave. Clerks record supplies of beer, grain and meat. One letter mentions socks and underpants sent to a soldier against the northern cold. Another document describes local Britons with a dismissive Latin word, Brittunculi, which means something like wretched little Britons. It is a rare moment where we hear how the occupiers spoke about the occupied. The voice is casual, a little rude, and very human.

The best-loved tablet is a birthday invitation. A woman named Claudia Severa wrote to her friend Sulpicia Lepidina, the wife of the fort's commander. She invited her to a birthday celebration and added a few warm lines in her own hand. Scholars believe these lines are among the earliest known examples of Latin handwriting by a woman. Nearly two thousand years later, you can still read a friend saying, in effect, please come, I will be so glad to see you.

The people at Vindolanda were not only Italians. Roman frontier forts were often garrisoned by auxiliary soldiers, recruited from provinces across the empire. Units from the regions of modern Belgium and the Netherlands served here, among others. These soldiers brought families, servants, traders and craftsmen. Outside the fort walls, a civilian town grew up, with houses, workshops, a bathhouse and taverns. As you walk the stone foundations, imagine narrow streets full of noise, smoke and many languages.

The modern story of this place is also unusual. In the late 1920s, the historian Eric Birley bought the site, and his family has been connected with its research ever since. Today an independent charity, the Vindolanda Trust, runs the excavations and the museum. Digging continues season after season. Volunteers from many countries come to work in the trenches beside professional archaeologists. Here is the second surprise. Experts believe most of the site is still unexcavated, so new finds appear almost every year.

As you explore, notice the reconstructions. Full-size replicas show a section of the Wall in stone and a section in timber and turf. They help you understand the scale of Roman building. Stand beside them and look up. The heights feel very real when you are standing at the foot of a wall. Then look back at the original foundations. The contrast helps you read the low ruins with fresh eyes, as rooms, barracks and roads.

The museum sits in a valley below the fort, near a small stream and a garden. Inside, the leather shoes, jewellery, writing tablets and weapons bring the ruins to life. One unusual find is a pair of leather boxing gloves, or perhaps a pair of padded hand guards, which suggests that soldiers trained or competed for sport. Take your time here. Small objects often tell the strongest stories, because a real person once held them, wore them, or lost them.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment on the hillside. Look north toward the ridge where the Wall runs along the crags. Feel the wind, which the soldiers here knew well. Listen again for the scrape of trowels in the trenches. Somewhere below you, in the dark wet clay, another letter or another shoe may be waiting. Vindolanda is not finished telling its story. As you walk away, you are simply leaving one more set of footprints on very old ground.