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I'd probably say this episode of Dan Snow's history, it is brought to you by Sky Sky, I want to let you know that a discovery of witches is returning for a second series. All the episodes are available now. If you don't know about it, it's a cool sort of historical fantasy mash up. So I'm a big fan of the first series. And the second series is even better because this time Matthew and Dana are heroes, are heroes who are in love with each other.

It's not easy relationship, by the way. You'll see why they're hiding in the world of Elizabethan London. And obviously on hand is a powerful witch who needs to help Diana because Diana has got magic folks. As you know, anyone who has magic struggles to control it goes with the territory. We all know that's the Luke Skywalker vibe. Matthew needs to find work in Elizabethan London, which, as you'll see, is pretty difficult. And don't forget to find a way to get back to the present day where obviously they face a bunch of dangers as well.

They've got enemies in the past. They've got contemporary enemies. They've got Elizabeth, the 1st era enemies. They've got Elizabeth, the second era enemies. Are we in a second Elizabethan age? Hmm. I'm not sure. Is that even a useful delineation of time anymore? Well, probably not in Ireland anyway. So there are demons. There are vampires. You need to watch as ever. Sky of Smash the Park, a discovery of witches, everybody.

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Everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history. Hit two miles south of Hadrian's Wall is the remains of Roman Kobrick. This has the unbelievably cool distinction of being the northernmost town of the Roman Empire. Well, before you stop me, obviously, the asinine invasion of Scotland's or Roman forces marched north of Hadrian's Wall. But this town was a enduring, bustling Roman settlement and as such was the northernmost town of the Roman Empire. Were going with it, were going with it.

That's what the historians and archaeologists are telling us. And it was so called. Here to talk us through Roman cooperage is Tristan Hughes. This is an episode of the Ancients podcast, our sibling podcast available wherever you get your pods. Treston walked around Coatbridge Well, The Remains of Coatbridge with the English heritage curator, Dr Francis Mackintosh. It's such a fantastic place. You've got to go and check it out. In fact, if you can't check it out, because, for example, you're locked in your house indefinitely during this global pandemic, you can go and view Tristan's full tour and documentary.

A much larger and fuller version of this podcast at history hit TV. Obviously, Tristant, very a fantastic programme looking at Hadrian's Wall, the logistics, the settlement of the defensive structure of which the wall was only one fairly significant part. Good to think about Hadrian's Wall as being a sort of defensive band across the north of England, a militarized region. Anyway, watch the TV, you'll learn more. So go over to history. Hit Dot TV.

We've just upgraded relaunched. Thank you for all your feedback. Glad people can now finally watch on Roku. It's all looking pretty good. The relaunch gone very smoothly. Very exciting. You can head over to history, hit Dota TV. You can sign up to join the world's best history channel and then you can watch this documentary on Coatbridge. But in the meantime, here's Treston doing his Ancient's podcast. Goodkin mad about it. He's going away from his desk.

More is out and about in the northern most town at the Roman Empire. Enjoy.

Hi, Frances. Thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to call with your career as it was known in the Roman times. Well, I must admit, one of the most extraordinary things, first of all, was just how big the site is. Yes, we stood right on the edge. And you can see in front of us the remains of this is only a small part. So Coatbridge Roman Coatbridge would have been around 50 acres. We think they would have covered all the fields surrounding us.

And actually, this is a really good point to talk about how it's connected to the rest of Britain. So over that hill there, the street, the room where New York up to Hadrian's Wall and pathogen's wall came down that hill, crossed over the river, that's just out of view, came up this field and then left and came into the site and joined what we call the staying gate, the east west road that goes all the way through to Carlisle.

And having these two roads right in the center of this Roman settlement, is that key to why it's here? Not initially. So the Romans came here first as a fort. Well, I say first two kilometers that way in the late 70s, about ten years. And it was as part of the move up into Scotland. So to conquer the entirety of the island, as the Romans originally tried, and then they moved here, which is a better point, we think maybe better visibility to monitor maybe the bridge crossing to see their street.

And it was a fort here from the late 80s until maybe about the 60s. And as you know, every fall as a town on the outside of it, what we call a VICAS, when the fort was abandoned, the VCR's and the civilians in that just took over and became a town. So that was when the crossroads gets really important because we think that's why the town continues rather than just being completely abandoned, because it's on such a key point for trade.

So this town, it becomes a town in its own right, outlives the food that seems quite remarkable along the sides of Hadrian's Wall in its own right. Yeah, it's amazing, really. And it's the most northerly town in Roman Britain at the moment. We're on one of the roads outside the next stage, of course, which is a really complex site. So at some point in the second century after the soldiers have left, some of them come back again.

There's a gap, but there's only a smaller group that come back. So soldiers have gone and then they come back. But it's not the auxiliary troops who come back who have stuff in a man in the rest of Hadrian's Wall, these noncitizen troops, it's Legionaries, these citizen soldiers, the ones who built Hadrian's Wall and they set up shop or set up camp in what we call these two small compounds to kind of like many forts were walking along the road outside one of them, and they sort themselves in to the town.

So we'll see when we walk for the site. What are the Romans best known for? Straight lines. They nice square walls, you know, square shapes. They can't do that in court because they're trying to fit around what the civilians have already made. So which is so complex. And we just don't know quite why and what that situation came out of. But some canny businessman and business women to keep the town going. I mean, you talk about the complexity there and you mentioned the civilians and the soldiers.

Does this really suggest that was cooperage quite a cosmopolitan society? Oh, absolutely. So we've got the soldiers who could be from, you know, any part of the empire, potentially. We don't know exactly where all the troops came from. We've got evidence of people speaking Greek here. We've got evidence of a man from Palmyra, the modern day Syria. So people from all over the empire come into Koby's like, you know, up on the wall.

And they're here three miles south of the wall, making things, selling things for all of these soldiers. Up on the wall. You mentioned a man from Palmyra that that's basically the eastern edge of the empire. Yeah. And he's about to trade all stationed here. That's on the north western edge of the empire. You can't really get much further apart really in that time and be still in the same empire. And so what are these remains that we're walking past now?

So we're in parts of the eastern compound. So this is when these Leatrice came and the late second or third century and we're on a little road in between. So it's kind of like a mini forts. They would have had some barracks. It's quite tricky to see because then after the legions we left again, so they come and they've left again. These buildings get taken over again by civilians. But this small barracks over there would be a headquarters if we go into western compound late will be a really good headquarters.

But you can see, and I'm sure you'll have noticed all the walls going up and down. Any thoughts would underneath? Absolutely. So we are now, as we are almost on top of the original fort. So when the fort was abandoned in the sixties, perhaps we think the barracks seem to be modern. They were demolished and was flattened, not removed, and then everything was flattened for them to build whatever's on top. Obviously, as you know, wood rots.

So the lines there where the wood has been. Put down and so kind of shoddy workmanship, so. The Romans are showing a different face at corporate out are you know, they're known for their straight lines, really routine and square shapes, which we do have here, plus not necessarily the best workmanship someone's left that although, you know, the Legionaries wouldn't have noticed that that's only happened after the Romans left. Francis next to me outside of these mini forts to show how they were slotted in, security is already existing town layout.

So this is the outer edge of the eastern compound. Now, if you ask anyone to describe a ribbon for it, be playing card shaped or very straight lines. However, if you look here, it curves around and then dogleg the long and long. And that's because these buildings here, which you can just see a little bit of, they're strip buildings facing the street front, probably shops, which would then have workshops in the back and perhaps accommodation upstairs.

They're already there when these legionaries come back. And for some reason, because you presume the army would have the power to kick them out, they don't. I quite like to think it's just because they know some would get really annoyed and it caused too much hoo ha. And they know they're going to be here and they've got to live alongside them. But you see, this is another one. This is a short building and they've taken it right up to the edge.

So they haven't evicted this person, but they've probably annoyed him because that was like someone building a conservative right up to your constituents. Yes, because if you walk up here, we cannot socially distance because look how narrow it is. So they didn't encroach on his space or her space. But, yeah, it's quite interesting how you see legionaries and shops, traders side by side, once again, not tearing down the shops. Now they're building around it.

And so we talk about in the third century co-op, which is a little bit like a garrison town. So people talk about Catterick nowadays with the huge Catterick Garrison and the soldiers and their families living in the town. And that town thrives because of that market at Corbitt. We've got soldiers and civilians living side by side, and these civilians are going to be supplying both these soldiers and soldiers upon the walls. It's a really symbiotic relationship. Probably all these traders at college wouldn't have survived if the war wasn't there because that's their market.

You know, all these men being paid money, but nowhere to go to spend it other than potentially cooperage. So even though college isn't on the wall itself, it has this strong connection to the wall. That's right. Mercantile connection. Economic connection. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure lots of the merchants here would have had contracts with the Army, personal links with the army, because the army's upon the wall for almost 300 years, claim to fame corporations here for longer.

You know, we don't like to make too much of that. And so they benefit from each other. The army gets supplies and people here make money.

It's pretty astonishing how close together the shops and these mini barracks were in Roman Kobrick. And from there, Francis and I headed on to Gate Road, this main arterial route which runs through the heart of Roman Coatbridge and talking about communication routes.

This is a major Roman route during the Roman occupation.

And yet so you can see all the way back there goes into that field and continues on all the way to Carlisle, which is about 30, 40 miles. We don't know the line the whole way is a bit join the dots at some point. We know it went all that way. And then as we walk back, we can see the different levels. So when they excavated here, so here we're about kind of fourth century corporate. And then if you go down in earlier levels, because obviously the Romans built on top and up and up so we can see the development of the site and its topography.

There's a really good depth that we can have a look at by the granaries, which when the excavators took it, it was a nice straight section. If they could see all the layers with that obviously slope out health and safety, you know, but it shows you how much build up over time there is. They didn't strip back and resurface. It was reserved on top. And this road's been used by the Romans for three hundred years plus before they left.

And what is the archaeology telling us about the shops that were situated alongside this main arterial right now? Probably a good time to take you to see eleven. Absolutely. Let's have a look. And I mean, is a bit of a rubbish name, isn't it? Forsight? It's not like the granaries or the compounds, but it's because no one will commit to what we think it was or what it was meant to be.

Site Eleven is an absolutely massive area in Roman Coatbridge, almost 100 metres by 100 metres in size.

So it takes up an absolutely vast amount of the site. And in the middle you've got these three buildings that are made up of much smaller stone than the rest. So they are early buildings haven't been fully demolished. So, you know, we said we're on top of the front of the old fort. Yes, they are the headquarters and the officers house of the old fort. And someone's flattened most of this site to build site eleven, but not finished those and got rid of them.

So what they're one of the clues that we know this building was never even finished because if you're building some ground structure, you don't leave two ruins in the middle.

It was in this area of Roman coverage that. Archaeologists made an extraordinary discovery, what's the most exciting find that you've uncovered inside of them? Well, it's found on site 11, but not on site 11. So when the object was buried that you're asking about, it was not size 11. So, again, with that complex kind of chronology. So in the second quarter of the second century, so one, two, five one fortyish, somebody buried a test in that period.

In the second century, there were barracks around here. So in our earlier fort and underneath the road outside of barback, someone we presume a soldier buried a chest so well, this sort of size wooden chest with iron bound in leather cladding and then filled it full of armor and the lowercase. I went after that famous I would say it looks a bit like an armadillo with some personal possessions, with tools, with all sorts. And we call it very much of the corporate old.

You listed dance news history here. We got Tristan on with an episode of the Ancients more after this. Akehurst recommends comedy podcasts we love.

Hi, I'm Jenny and I'm Kalakh, and together we're two halves of the popular opinion podcast for two guys with very different backgrounds and very different opinions on topics from gimmicks to irrational fears to scams and superstitions with special guests and real listener opinions, we're sure you'll find a nugget of interest in House of Popular Subscribe now on ACost, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

Akehurst is the home of comedy podcasts in Ireland, including the Two Journeys, The Blind Boy podcast, the one you're listening to right now.

And this was buried by a soldier before 9/11 became what we now know, Sergeant. Exactly. So we're told is an absolutely fascinating find, but it's also a really good example of it's found here. And we now talk about. But when it was buried, it wasn't site 11. So it can confuse visitors. But there were barracks and streets underneath here before 9/11 was built. And we don't know why he buried it. So modern day army, you know, you've got the oil engineer cause, et cetera, and the specialists and all the things in the Roman army, within the Legion and within an auxiliary tree.

Soldiers have all the skills. There would be masons, would be architects, there would be medics. Clerics would also be armorers. So our best guess for the quarter is that it was the spazz and the tools of an armor who was also a soldier. So there was parts of six suits, but no complete suit. There was 20 or 30 spear. So the iron, but none of the half opened all together and then his tools. And so if one section of your Laqueur, you were going to have to break it.

It's really clever. You can just take that one section out, replace it with another. So it makes a real sense of the armor. He collected all the spares so that he could repair his suit. So it's absolutely fascinating because before that, so for nineteen sixty four we knew about that type of armor, you know it was known but no one found very much so they didn't really understand, you know, how you might make a suit, how you might wear it, how you might repair it, which is really quite key when the army are out and about.

And because so much was found, because they were able to reconstruct it the first time, which is, you know, in the geeky world of where our military equipment really exciting, but also in the wider world, quite exciting because to understand how these things were worn and used, we found leather straps which held the bits of metal together. So it shows how flexible it was because before people had seen on sculptures and been like, I don't know, it's actually very practical.

But because of this fine, we were able to not me, obviously, you know where to find all this out, which is amazing. So we have this possible legionary slash blacksmith. Yeah. Thank for burying all this equipment yet that we've now found almost 2000 years later, Clay. And then you've got the mystery of why deep area, why did you not come back?

Mysteries about not only from such that we headed across to see the remains of one of the most important structures from Roman Coatbridge, arguably the lifeblood of Roman cooperage. Right.

So we're going to go and have a look at the aqueduct. So all Roman for some towns would require water supply, obviously, but it's rare to have the aqueduct survive. And so you can see where it's been robbed, the width of it. So it's a really big construction because obviously water is really important to the, you know, functioning of a town. The Romans understood to some extent about germs and things not they said we would, but they knew that running water was better than stagnant water.

So when we get to the fountain, we'll see. They had settling tanks. So the water wasn't sitting because a new running water, much healthier, much better. And so I'm now in the aqueduct breathing, completely robbed by later generations. Modern Coatbridge over there. A lot of it spills out of it.

As Francis mentioned, the water from the aqueduct, it flows down into the tanks right next to a fountain, a fountain which was crucially important to the people of Roman Kobrick.

So I'm below the level you can see here. This is part of the platform. And so there would have been at least two tanks until the tank where people could come and get the water runs down. So we've got some of the decorative stonework, but it's just, again, an absolutely vast construction, isn't it? And those stones there, which are really worn, that was from where? From people leaning over and dragging their bucket. So we know these things were used for a really long time and you will not see a fountain in a river for you might see a whale or a tank, but not a fountain like this.

So this is something really unique. And I love what he says about that. Scratching the to the scratching is that you can see all the wearing away that is from 2000 years ago from people reaching over trying to get water. Absolutely. Yeah. So some of them are quite smooth over time, but yeah. So it's really staggering. And we know. So the big pillow behind you here and its sister on the other side, they would have held a statue.

So it was ornate, it was decorative, wasn't just functional. It was a big statement for the northernmost town. And remember. Exactly.

Yeah, that's Frances and I headed back towards the entrance. There was one more building which we wanted to talk about.

And this building is one of the most recognizable buildings that you would see in any Roman force across the length and breadth of the empire, the granaries.

What have we got over here? These look like the base of some amazing pillars. Yeah, they're really vast, aren't they? And that's because they're here to hold up covid Portico or canopy. To protect the interests of the granaries, so the granaries store food stuffs, not just grain, but it could be any form of wheat or barley, all those all the sorts of grains. But there may be bread, but also perhaps wine or olive oil or other foodstuffs that you want to keep away from predators and pests.

Because if you look around, you can see again, we're talking about the floor level. That's the floor level there. So you've got it looks like the remains are stone slabs above these channels underneath. So it's raised floor to keep the airflow, so to keep damp away, but also to keep pests away, rats and mice and other things. And so really good construction there. Interesting. You know, these countries were occupied and used for at least 200 years and they repaired some of our lovely inscriptions that we found there on display in the museum were found at the repaving the road or repaving the granary in here.

But people often think this might be wonderful heating because one of those things where there's famous for but no, this is just another form. So we do have wonderful heating, obviously up on the wall. But no, this is just to keep the airflow. Is that a key difference that you need to realize sometimes that with these ancient sites, what are the size of the granaries where it isn't the wonderful heating it to keep away pests and the other places where it is and for heating and the quite interesting try and figure out which is which?

Yes, you would generally expect for heat. And in bathhouses we can see them up on the wall at the trusties bathhouse, but also perhaps in the cleaning officer's house in the center of the forts. You'll see that in some of our forts because they're the ones they've got that, you know, the luxury to be able to afford and for heating. But I mean, it's the same sort of technology it's keeping afloat. But this is to keep dry and keep away from the pest.

But no, it's really impressive structure of these countries. And in regards to these stones, yes, of course, the is made quite a lot from local stone. And is it the same cool, which is really quite local. Absolutely. Because quarrying a moving stone is a huge amount of work. So you want to get it from as close as possible because it saves money and time. So we know this quarry is kind of locally dotted around.

Sometimes it's difficult to know for certain if a quarry was using the Roman period because often it was used in the Roman period, which is in the medieval in the post-modern period also. And they erase all the signs of the Roman working. But people are starting to look at geology and see if they can match up the geology of stones now as local as possible and keep going over that way. Yeah. So so this is our eastern granary. It's got a pairing with a Western granite.

And what's really nice along here is you can see the buttresses that have been built on both. So, again, monumental construction, these were built to last. And what's really nice with we walk along here is you can see these windows are not windows put through into the ground again to allow airflow. So really rare that these have survived in situ, these Roman vents. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And because it seems to be a staple of Roman forts throughout Hadrian's Wall.

So she was also, to the chagrin of these granaries, and it's all full of this quite similar design. They knew what they wanted to do with me.

Yeah. So if you went to a fort in Syria, they say Peralta's are our Paul Miren was based in Syria and then came over here and set up houses, you know, exactly where everything was laid out because the fort was a fort, was a fort, the commanding officers house and the headquarters in the middle. Everything will be laid out in a grid system. And it's partly, I think, Roman efficiency. Everything must be the same. Also, it's quite sensible because if you got woken up with an alarm, you know, someone's come in, you're always going to know how to get out because you're always going to be stationed in a fortress laid out the same sorts of military tactics as well, given how much coverage has been uncovered there, small amounts.

Given how huge the site is, how much are we still got to uncover? How much? Well, so we have this site here that the visitors can see that was given to the nation in the 1930s. But every field along outside of it has got room coverage. And we've seen the idea of excavation in the Old Wardian periods or by geophysical survey or aerial photography of the sites, at least 50 acres. We know where some of the cemeteries are.

So we know that's definitely edge of the town. But then in between where we know the town is and the cemeteries as a modern town, which is maybe covering up some of that. So we really just don't know. It's just vast. It's very exciting to hear for the future. Yes.

Pray for him. I hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go, a bit of a favor to ask. Totally understand. If you want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash, money makes sense. But if you could just do me a favor, it's for free. Go to iTunes or have you get your podcast. If you give it a five star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, perjure yourself, give it a glowing review.

Really appreciate that stuff. Well, the law of the jungle out there and I need all the fire support I can get, so that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you do, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.