York's Secret History: the Roman York half-hidden from view

IT doesn’t take new residents and visitors long to learn that York was originally a Roman city.

If you walk to the Minster you can’t help but notice the 7.6-metre-high column opposite the south door of the cathedral. It was discovered during an excavation in 1969 and given to the city to mark the 1900th anniversary of its founding in AD71.

Nor can you fail to notice Philip Jackson’s 1998 statue of Constantine the Great in Minster Yard. Constantine was the first Emperor to become a Christian. His father, Constantius, was on a visit to York in AD306 when he died here and so his son was duly proclaimed Emperor.

A clue to York’s Roman past is also to be found in the Archbishop of York’s signature. The current holder of the post signs his name Stephen Ebor: on official documents. Ebor is short for Eboracum, the name the Romans gave the city when they arrived. It’s thought that Eboracum is derived from the Celtic word for ‘the place of the yew trees’. At any rate, you’ll also encounter the word Ebor now and again in company names, and there is of course the Ebor Festival, a four-day race meeting held in York each August.

But there’s a great deal of Roman York that is half-hidden from view. Guided tours and guide books will point visitors in the direction of the Multangular Tower in the Museum Gardens. If you look closely, you’ll notice the layer of red Roman bricks at roughly head height. The lower part of this tower was built early in the third century by the Emperor Severus and formed part of York’s legionary fortress.

Then there is the Roman bathhouse hidden from view beneath the Roman Bath pub in St Sampson’s Square. The baths were discovered as recently as 1930, and you can still see the warm room (tepidarium), hot steam room (caldarium) and the cold plunge room (frigidarium). Historians believe that these baths were built some time between AD71 and AD122.

Extensive excavations have taken place in this city over the years, and a great deal of Roman York has been unearthed. The Romans established a military base here in AD71 under Emperor Severus and the Ninth Legion (Hispana) was brought in to quell local tribal resistance. The military garrison was located where Petergate is today and covered the whole of the site now occupied by York Minster. Two Roman legions were stationed in York; the Ninth Legion from AD71 to AD117 and later, the Sixth Legion (Victrix) which left York soon after AD400.

Ghost Walk guides love to tell the story of the Roman soldiers who supposedly haunt the cellar of the Treasurer’s House. Were they part of the Ninth Legion that disappeared without trace when they left the city in early in the second century? And did they march out of York down the Via Decumana (present-day Chapter House Street)? If so, they would probably have left the city via the north-east gate of the legionary fortress (the Porta Decumana). This gate disappeared from sight when the medieval walls were built, but it’s believed to be intact beneath them. Perhaps we shall know more when we have the full results of the ground-penetrating radar project that started last year to map as much of underground Roman York as possible.

The other main gate into Roman York was the Praetorian Gate (Porta Praetoria) located in what is today St Helen’s Square at the end of present-day Stonegate. A plaque on the wall of Harker’s commemorates this. Leading out from these gates would have been Roman York’s two main streets: the Via Pretoria (present-day Stonegate) and the Via Principalis (present-day Petergate).

If the area on the Minster side of the River Ouse was the site of the military fortress, the area on the other side of the river, present-day Bishophill and Micklegate, was where the civilian population lived.

Traces of Roman York can still be found here. The base of St Martin-cum-Gregory church tower is built from Roman masonry, and there are still traces of Roman stonework in the pre-11th-century tower at St Mary Bishophill Junior. Excavation just to the north of this church in the vicarage garden by archaeologist and historian Peter Wenham and his team in the 1960s unearthed the large part of a substantial third or fourth-century, well-preserved Roman town house.

Evidence of pre-Christian worship was also found when an altar stone depicting Mithras was found almost three centuries ago in Micklegate.

Huge amounts of artefacts such as glasswork and leatherwork from Roman York and the Yorkshire region can be viewed at the Yorkshire Museum in the Museum Gardens, including The Ryedale Hoard Collection.

So why has York’s Roman heritage been so well preserved? Ecology expert James Stockdale suggests it’s because of the wet clay soil, the underlying rock formation and the confluence of two rivers, the Ouse and the Foss in the Vale of York, which is essentially a river plain. No oxygen in the clay soil means little or very slow decomposition.

Much of Roman York is hidden or, perhaps we should say, half-hidden. But it ‘comes alive’ again every summer. This year, the Eboracum Roman Festival is being held from 7-9 July 7-9 in the Museum Gardens. A date for your diary.

David Wilson is a Community Writer with The Press