Roman and digitally restored. According to
English Heritage, the photograph dates to 1859 and none of the hypocaust system extant in this photograph has survived today as the modern
pilae stacks are replicas of the originals, which were taken by souvenir hunters during the late 19th century. view of Viroconium Cornoviorum and the remains of the city wall Wroxeter was first established in the early years of the Roman conquest of Britain as a frontier post for a
cohort of
Thracian Auxilia who were taking part in the campaigns of the governor,
Publius Ostorius Scapula. The site is strategically located near the end of
Watling Street, the primary Roman trunk road that ran across Britannia from
Dubris (
Dover). The post was a key frontier position because it defended the
River Severn valley as it comes out of
Cambria (
Wales) as well as protecting the route to the south that leads to the
Wye valley. In the mid 1st century Caesar's
Legio XIV Gemina took over the site from the Thracian Auxilia in preparation for the invasion of Wales and replaced the fort with a much larger legionary fortress. In 78 governor
Gnaeus Julius Agricola led campaigns to suppress the tribes in North Wales and the druids on
Ynys Môn. In 80
Agricola took Legio XIV Gemina north on his punitive expeditions against the
Picts in Scotland. With the departure of Legio XIV Gemina,
Legio XX Valeria Victrix took over the fortress. In this period the
canabae, or civilian settlement, that had grown up around the legionary fort began turning it into a town. Archaeological research has found that an unfinished legionary bath house in the centre of the town eventually became the town's
forum. A decade later a civic street grid was subsuming the plan of the old legionary fort. which appeared in the
Historia Brittonums list of the 28
civitates of Britain, became the site of the court of a sub-Roman kingdom known as Powys, which was the successor territorial unit to the
Cornovii tribal kingdom, whose second capitale was known as Llys Pengwern ( maybe the Berth hillfort ). Though many of the buildings fell into disrepair, the urban life continued well into the fifth century. The
Wroxeter Stone or Cunorix Stone shows this. Found in 1967, with an inscription in an
Insular Celtic language, identified by the Celtic Inscribed Stones Project (CISP) at
UCL as "partly-Latinized Primitive Irish"., it is probably a re-used gravestone dated to 460-475 AD, when Irish raiders had begun to make permanent settlements in South Wales and south-western Britain. By the VIth century, most Roman urban sites and villas in Britain were being abandoned but the town between 530 and 570 underwent a substantial rebuilding programme. The old basilica was carefully demolished and replaced with new timber-framed buildings on rubble platforms. These probably included a very large two-storey building and a number of storage buildings and houses. In all, 33 new buildings were "carefully planned and executed" and "skillfully constructed to Roman measurements using a trained labour force". Who instigated this rebuilding programme is not known, but it may have been a bishop. Some of the buildings were renewed three times, and the community probably lasted about 75 years until, for some reason, many of the buildings were dismantled. The site was probably abandoned peacefully in the second half of the seventh century or the beginning of the eighth. There is a tradition that
Shrewsbury was "founded on occasion of the decay of the Roman Uriconium." Historian John Wacher suggests that Shrewsbury may have been refortified by refugees fleeing an outbreak of a plague in Viroconium around this time. In 656,
Oswiu conquered Llys Pengwern and Sropshire became part of the
Wreocensæte ( 'inhabitants of Wroxeter' in old english ), a sub-kingdom of the
Angles. ==Preservation==