Was Malton Roman Fort also the Romano-British town named as Delgovicia?

Hello again and Happy Friday to you!

Malton Museum

My trip to Malton Museum Roman Festival last weekend was most enjoyable. The site for the festival was Orchard Fields, Malton. Orchard Fields is an undulating sloping site that for many visitors, or dog walkers, is a pleasant green space to spend time in. An archaeologist would probably see the site differently and would likely be able to assess where the ramparts of the Roman Fort of almost 2000 years ago would have been, without recourse to specialist equipment.

First used in the time of General Cerialis' Britannic governorship, Malton was initially a temporary camp of some 22 acres, built to shelter the advancing troops who flooded Brigantia around AD71/73. By AD 79, it's thought that it would have been under the governorship of Gnaeus Iulius Agricola that the first wooden fort of 8.5 acres was constructed and then some decades later the walls were laid in stone, the perimeter shape of the fort changing according to the amount of soldiers; horses and mules it had to give shelter to. Remnants of these walls were excavated in the 1920s by an archaeologist named Philip Corder who clarified that the fort was of a typical 'playing card' shape. Substantial coin evidence of the Caurausian era would point to the fort being used/ occupied for many decades, to at least the late 200s.

I've made many mentions in my Celtic Fervour Series of the military activities of both General Cerialis and General Agricola. And my main characters in the series are, of course, of Brigantian origins so I felt quite at home in Malton waxing lyrical to anyone who stopped by to listen and to buy my novels.

The site was well laid out with exhibitor off-loading available at the 'upper' main gate, after which I had to drive my car round the town streets to park at the bottom end of Orchard Fields which is quite a bumpy slope.

Terry Deary signing books almost all day! 

The 'Author' tent was set next to the 'Talk' tent where various people gave talks, myself included. Alongside me were two very busy tables. One inhabited by Kemps Books, the local bookstore in Malton; and the other was Terry Deary's signing table (Horrible Histories). Acquiring Terry to attend the festival was genius since it drew many families onto the festival site all day long. Three other authors were in our little area- Kate Cunningham (children's books); Nick Brown (military Roman fiction) and Clive Ashman (Roman fiction and non fiction).  

Danny Allsebrook (Caractacus); Fiona Trigg (Cartimandua)
Brigante me; and the other Brigante! 

There were many other stalls and activities to keep everyone happy all day long. Equestrian shows were further down the field in the arena area and Roman Re-enactors gave live demonstrations of various Roman crafts. And I was delighted to again meet my Brigante friends - Fiona Trigg, Danny Allsebrook and one more Brigante - having seen them at the York Eboracum Roman festival in 2022 and 2023. It was equally nice to touch base again with Graham Harris (Romans in York/ re-enactors) and a few of his re-enactor soldiers that I recognised from the Eboracum festivals. 

Kate Cunningham and I having a laugh! 

A very good day was had by all, I believe, if the happy kids were anything to go by. They were clutching multiple Terry Deary books all dutifully signed by said author. 

The day passed really quickly and afterwards I spent a lovely few hours out dining in Malton with Kate Cunningham and her wonderful family. 

It was a long way to drive but well worth it! And I also signed a few copies of my own novels! 

Slainte! 

Atenociticus at the Hancock, Great North Museum, Newcastle!

Hello and a Happy Thursday to you!

I was so delighted around a week ago when I left Aberdeenshire to drive down to Malton, East Yorkshire, to be a participant at the Malton Roman Festival 2024. It was going to be an exciting new venue for me but there was something else I'd planned to do before reaching Malton. 

During the last few years, I'd tried a number of times to fit in a visit to the Hancock, Great North Museum in Newcastle, but was unsuccessful. The Covid lockdown in 2020 was just one reason that an overnight stay in Newcastle was abandoned but since I had intended to drive all the way to the Roman Festival in Malton, stopping for a night in Newcastle was very doable.

I've been to Newcastle before, though not for decades, but time was tight for exploring more of the city centre on this visit. Since the distance to Newcastle from my home is more than 260 miles, it takes a chunk of the day just to arrive there. I'm so delighted that 'Mrs. Google Maps' is very efficient, she got me right to my hotel which was about a 40 minute walk from the museum. I knew that I'd not have time on arrival on the Friday to visit but I spent a wonderful 3 + hours on the Saturday before I headed on south to Malton.

Atenociticus -Benwell Fort

Why was I so keen to visit Hancock Great North museum?

More than a decade ago I saw an image in a research book that caught my attention. It was the image of a native god, thought to have been worshipped around the Benwell Fort (Hadrian's Wall) area and a god which was 'adopted' by some of the Roman soldiers who were stationed along the wall. When I first set eyes on it I was enraptured - it is just so different somehow from the typical Roman or Greek god images. There is also the fact that it is so well executed, unlike some other representations of native gods which are relatively crudely made. 

I knew that the head of Atenociticus was part of the Hancock museum collections of items found along Hadrian's Wall forts and had to see it right there in front of me! It's actually larger than I thought it would be and would love to see an interpretation of what the complete figure may have been like. (some body parts have been found )

The whole collection on show in the Hadrian's Wall exhibition area is absolutely stunning and I especially love the way they have positioned a number of funerary stones together in a display which shows how they might have originally been painted. The concept of the stones being highly coloured is one that I find quite breathtaking. I first read of this some years ago and was enthralled. I adore  looking at some of the 3D imagery videos of places like Ancient Rome in all its coloured glory.

I think that the native Britons who first encountered painted altar stones, or other coloured epigraphy, must have been quite daunted by the sights. To live and worship Celtic gods who generally 'had no face' believing that their gods inhabited the earth, and the trees and the foliage, would have meant natives may have been quite stunned by painted god images.

I'd love to know when the god worship of the Atenociticus figure first began. Was he a god figure that had been revered by the local tribes for centuries, but till the Roman invasions of AD 71 had had 'no face'? Could it have been seeing statues of Roman gods that gave a gifted local stone mason the courage and ingenuity to create his own god image of Atenociticus? And was that image then seen as a powerful inspiration for the units at Benwell fort? And...was the god Atenociticus figure ever painted?

I'm so glad I've seen Atenociticus in person but I'm also delighted to have experienced the whole Hancock Great North Museum, though I did focus almost entirely on the Roman collections.

If you love museums, I definitely recommend a visit to Hancock Great North Museum. An additional bonus is that it's FREE though giving a donation, as I did, is advisable to show appreciation of the availability of seeing the wonderful collection. 

My next post will be about my visit to...Malton.

Till then...happy reading!

Slainte!

Where have I been of late?

Hello!

I've been visiting two very different museums during the last couple of weeks and have also been a participant at a fabulous Roman Festival in Malton, East Yorkshire. More coming very soon on all of these really exciting visits, but first in chronological order:

The Verdant Works Museum, Dundee, Scotland. 

My main character, Margaret Law, in the Silver Sampler Series finds herself in the city of Dundee at the beginning of Book 2. The date is 1856 and I needed to find out more about the mill workings at that time in Dundee. This isn't because Margaret gets herself a job at one of the big 'newish' mill manufactories, but she does find work using her seamstress skills. I wanted to find out more about how seamstresses, or tailors, bought the materials they worked with. Were there any mills at that time in Dundee supplying any types of domestic-use cloth, as in woollen cloth; cotton; or even linen? 

Unfortunately, I didn't really get my answers in the excellently-run Verdant Works Museum but I did find out lots of other useful information.

I already knew that in the mid 1850s, Dundee became one of the most successful global areas in producing jute products. The Dundee mills which had tended towards linen production during the 1820s to 1850s found it lucrative to quickly switch to jute and hessian production during the Crimean War (1853-1856) when supplies of flax for linen dried up, there being a blockade on ships trading flax to Britain from the Baltic States.

Jute was a useful, sturdy cloth for producing multi-use sacks, canvas for awnings on carts, and for tent making among other many uses. The American Civil War (1861-1865) was another reason for the Dundee jute mills to be highly successful since they were a large supplier for the American military.

From the 1820s, shipping in general in Dundee had improved. Shipbuilding was thriving but also the docks had been extended, well designed to accommodate the off and on-loading necessary for a rapid turn-around of goods.

A lovely lady named Lily 

Though back to my Verdant Works Mill Museum visit:

The machinery on view at the Verdant Works is smaller scale than the originals (some scaled down x7) but the working machines make it great to see the different stages of jute production. The mills when fully operational must have been incredibly noisy, unhealthy places to work in. My new friend in the photo, an octogenarian called Lily, was once-upon-a-time a worker at the Verdant Works all her working-life. She volunteers on Sundays and is often the only person who is allowed/ authorised to demonstrate machines working. I had a wonderful solo tour with Lily, the museum not yet busy on the Sunday morning that I visited. Lily gave me a lovely gift of a book about Old Dundee since I told her of my reasons for being there.

Lily also told me that losing hearing was very common in the mills but, over time, the workers had developed their own sign-language to compensate. She demonstrated various amusing signals which would indicate if the 'big boss' was on the way, perhaps expected in two or three minutes time (signals for this) and signals for other practical communications between the workers. The dusty fibres shed in the production of jute cloth were a death-knell to many of the earliest mill workers and the Victorian life-span was shockingly short. 

I was very surprised at how soft and silky the jute strands are before they go through the teasing and winding processes before being spun onto bobbins. 

The Verdant Works Museum at Lochee in Dundee is definitely worth a visit, even if like me you get lost driving along the very short cobbled lanes between the many different mill buildings. Some of the buildings are now home to gyms, small commercial concerns etc. It's wonderful to know that although more than 150 years old the buildings can be repurposed rather than being knocked down. 

To get the answers I want, I'm now delving into various publications, including a new research book named 'Onwards from Osnaburgs' by Christopher A Whatley. (recommended to me by Chris Longmuir an author friend who lives in Angus and who also had a job at a local mill in Montrose)

 

Meanwhile, I need to catch up with some gardening and do more of the second part of Margaret Law's story. 

Slainte! 

p.s. Novice Threads is picking up some fantastic reviews and ratings on various internet sites. Last I looked on Amazon UK it has 49 ratings, 50% of which are 5*, so it's almost at a first milestone.