The Later Fort

Something of the later fort was already known, as we have seen above, and it was no surprise to discover the officer's quarters of a barrack block on the Church Chare site. Unusually, the officer's quarters were constructed at least partly of well-dressed stone, whilst the men's quarters were made wholly of timber. The stone of the officer's quarters was bonded with clay (the Roman army frequently used clay, rather than mortar, for this) and very carefully coursed to allow for the rather uneven contours of the land upon which the building was constructed.

Constructing the building over the ditch of the earlier turf-and-timber fort provided especial problems to the Roman architects, not least because any feature ­ such as a ditch ­ cut into the ground and then backfilled, will be liable to subsidence as the contents settle over the years, unless care is taken to pack it.

Both the north and south walls of the officer's quarters showed how careful the Romans were to counter any possible subsidence, because they allowed for the ditch by increasing the depth of the foundations where they passed over it, thereby theoretically strengthening the building. Even so, once it was excavated, some evidence of slumping on both the north and south wall was apparent.

The east wall of the officer's quarters was actually set partly into the side of the old ditch. Normal practice would be to dig a construction trench, place one or two courses of the foundations within it, and then proceed to build the wall on top. At Church Chare, however, a rather different procedure was followed: it seems that a rectangular trench was dug into the ground and on at least three sides of this, the foundations were placed right up against the material into which the hole had been dug. This meant that three courses of dressed stone were below Roman ground level on the east side of the building, by the time it was finished ­ an unusually sound foundation.

The north and south foundations were then tapered and they progressed uphill from the east side, until only a single foundation course survived next to the Salvation Army building.

The officer's quarters were almost square, at 10.08m by 10.90m (33ft by 36ft), and initially divided into three rooms. An east-west partition wall divided the building into two halves, and then a north-south wall divided off a small room in the north-east corner. This seems to have contained the officer's latrine (most soldiers had to use communal facilities, usually provided in rampart-back buildings or in bath-houses). A stone-lined drain led away from the latrine and across the building to the north.

At some point in the building's life, a further, rather rough-and-ready, partition was added, dividing the south room into two halves, so there was then a total of four rooms in the officer's quarters.

A major change in the internal arrangements of the building came when the internal partitions were mostly removed and a flagged floor laid down, in some places using the newly-levelled partition wall foundations as flooring, in others incorporating re-used stone from elsewhere (pieces of dressed facing stone from walls, pieces of worn flagging, and even a pivot stone from a doorway). This laying down of flags coincided with cobbles being put down over much of the south room.

The exterior walls of the officer's quarters show evidence of having been rebuilt at least once, using a different kind of stone to that originally incorporated in the walling. This was most readily apparent at the south-east corner of the building.

Although we do not know for certain which unit occupied the fort of Concangis, we might guess that the cavalry unit of the inscription mentioned above were based here at some point and may even have been responsible for the construction of our barrack building. In this case, the officer's quarters would have belonged to a decurio, the commander of 32 cavalry troopers (if infantry, on the other hand, he would have been a centurio in charge of 80 men).

The officer's quarters seems finally to have been demolished in the late fourth century (pottery characteristic of this date was found amongst the tumble from the walls, along with animal bone, presumably from domestic refuse, and poor-quality tile from the roof).

The men's quarters were only partially examined, as they could safely be left for investigation by archaeologists of future generations. As has been mentioned, this part of the barrack was mainly timber built, although once the timber frame had wattle-and-daub or wooden panels fitted and these were plastered, it would have been difficult to tell that there was a difference in the mode of construction between the two parts of the building.

We know from many parallel examples of excavated barracks what to expect at Chester-le-Street: probably between eight and twelve (usually ten) pairs of rooms, the back one being the soldiers' living quarters and the front the storage area for all their equipment. This barrack would have stretched beneath the original Parish Centre building.

To the east of the barrack was the cobbled street (complete with rounded kerb stones) that lay between it and the next barrack along. No sign of this second barrack was found on the site, so this showed that the street was unusually broad (they were sometimes very narrow indeed).

[PREVIOUS] [MORE DETAIL] [CONTENTS] [NEXT]