Portus Lemanis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fort Lympne
Alternative name a) Portus Lemanis ,
b) Lemanis ,
c) Stutfall Castle
limes Britain
section Litus saxonicum
Dating (occupancy) a) 1st and 2nd century AD
b) 3rd to 4th century AD
Type a) Fleet fort
b) Limitanei fort
unit a) Classis Britannica (?),
b) Numerus Turnacensium
size approx. 3.4 ha
Construction Stone construction
State of preservation Pentagonal system,
south side completely eroded,
rising masonry of the north, east and west walls partly. still up to eight meters high, the
east gate has been archaeologically proven
place Lymph
Geographical location 51 ° 4 '5.4 "  N , 1 ° 1' 17.6"  E
hf
Previous Anderitum (Pevensey) castle to the southwest
Subsequently Portus Dubris (Dover) northeast
Aerial view of the fort area
Webaviation

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

The Saxon Coast Fort around 400 AD
Fort Lemanis, attempted reconstruction of the east gate
Findings of the fort
View from the south of the castle hill
Remains of the east wall
The opening of the east gate in 1976
The excavation of the fort bath in 1850

Fort Lemanis or Portus Lemanis is a former Roman fort and was part of the Limes on the Saxon coast near today's Lympne in Kent , England .

The fort originally secured a lagoon and a natural harbor. It served as the base for the British provincial fleet and was later incorporated into the chain of fortresses on the Saxon coast. The remains of the fortification were largely destroyed by erosion. That is why it is very difficult today to get a complete picture of their appearance and size.

Surname

The Roman name for Fort Lympne is first mentioned in the Antonini Itinerarium in the early 3rd century. The entry on Portus Lemanis states that it is sixteen miles from the capital of the Cantium region , Durovernum ( Canterbury , Kent). In the Tabula Peutingeriana the place appears as Lemanio . For the last time Lemanis is mentioned in the ancient sources by the " Geographer of Ravenna " in the 7th century. He situates Lemanis between Dubris and Mutuantonis, which has not yet been identified . At that time the fort had long since been abandoned. Today the site is also known as Stutfall Castle.

location

Today's Lympne stands on the cliffs above the so-called Romney Marsh in Kent. It is located about eleven kilometers west of the port city of Folkestone and 17 kilometers east of Ashford . The ruins of the fort and the port are located south of today's Lympne on a small hill, a little below the medieval Stutfall Castle, from which one can overlook the coast and the surrounding flat marshland. The Roman fortress was located on the lower slopes of a cliff, the remnant of a former coastal cliff, mainly made of soft limestone covered with early Cretaceous clay. At this point the embankment reaches a height of 100 meters above sea level.

The topography of the coast has changed a lot since Roman times as the land u. a. was drained in the early 19th century to fill a canal built by the British Army. The nearby Isle of Oxney used to be hill country at the confluence of three rivers that were also suitable for inland navigation. They emptied into a northeast running tidal basin , which formed a natural harbor and extended to Hythe . The geology of the fort hill and its embankments is very unstable; since Roman antiquity, the upper layers of the earth have steadily shifted further downwards due to continuous sliding. As a result, large parts of the northern and eastern walls are no longer in their original position and the ancient harbor basin became increasingly muddy. This was probably also the reason that the fort and port had to be abandoned in the end.

Research history

The fort site has so far only been little investigated. The only major excavation campaign was carried out by Charles Roach Smith between 1850 and 1852. Otherwise, so far only smaller investigations have taken place on the fort area, such as B. the uncovering of the east gate in 1976. At the foot of the southern cliffs, remains of an Anglo-Saxon fortress were also found, Stutfall (= mighty wall); this was built directly over the foundation walls of the Roman fort.

development

Portus Lemanis was almost certainly not one of the landing sites of the Roman invading army in AD 43, but it may have served as a landing stage for the newly formed Roman canal fleet ( Classis Britannica ) on the inhospitable and dangerous coast opposite the island of Vectis (now the Isle of Wight ) such as B. also the port of Noviomagus Regnorum ( Chichester , Sussex ). It protected a small port, which mainly served as a loading and transshipment point for the goods of the regional ore mining and smelting industry, which was located in the immediate vicinity on the banks of the Rother and Brede rivers . Lemanis was the starting point of a trade route to the tin mines in Cornwall at Ictis ( St. Michael's Mount ). To the west of Lemanis were the salt marshes and the ore mines of the South Downs , but they were probably administered from the closer Portus Dubris . In addition to the export of iron, the shipping of wood and salt extracted in salt marshes via Portus Lemanis is also known. Apart from that, the history of the fort lies largely in the dark. It is possible that it played a larger role as naval headquarters during the short-lived secession of Britain from the Roman Empire under the usurper Carausius. In his chronicle from the second half of the 4th century Eutrop reports that the naval admiral Carausius was commissioned around 285 AD to pacify the English Channel from Portus Itius ( Boulogne ), which had been made unsafe by pirates who called Eutropus "Franconia" and "Saxony" inscribed. The widely ramified river system of Britain enabled the Germanic invaders to advance quickly into the interior of the island in their small, shallow rowing boats. Their raids on the British and Gallic coasts increasingly hindered civilian sea traffic and, above all, the transfer of British merchandise and precious metals to Gaul and Rome . As a countermeasure, a separate military district, the litus Saxonicum ( Saxon coast ), was set up on both sides of the canal, which was commanded in Britain by a Comes litoris Saxonici per Britanniam . When the Roman army under Flavius ​​Stilicho became militarily active again in Britain in 398, it possibly found its way into the Roman official calendar, the Notitia Dignitatum, for the first time . The Romans therefore built fortifications in these exposed coastal areas - and especially at river mouths - which were also connected to the Roman military camps in the Gallic part of the litus Saxonicum . The Saxon coastal fort Lemanis is likely to have been built around 270 AD. Whether the British fleet had its main base in Portus Dubris (Dover) or in Lemanis at that time is still a matter of dispute . Lemanis was probably abandoned as the Roman administration and army withdrew from Britain in the late 4th or early 5th century.

Fort

The remains that can still be seen today date from the period between 270 and 280. They consist of individual wall segments and towers, which were considerably displaced by the severe soil erosion. The late antique fortress presumably superimposes a previous Antonine fortress. The fortification was structurally at the transition from the playing card-shaped forts from the early and mid-imperial period to the irregular, much stronger fortified and smaller specimens from late antiquity. According to the findings of the remaining masonry, the fort is likely to have the shape of an irregular pentagon with a north wall angled in half. An unusual shape for Roman fortresses, presumably an adaptation to the terrain on which it was built (a similar arrangement can be seen at the fort near Pevensey). The defensive wall enclosed an area of ​​approx. 3.4 hectares and should originally have been around 9 meters high. The southern front of the fort - today only very poorly preserved - has completely disappeared. The remnants of the north, west and east walls show that their cast masonry was very solid and reinforced with semicircular towers protruding from the wall according to the latest fortress construction technology at the time. Because of the unstable subsoil, they stood on pilots made of oak. There were probably up to 14 of them, some of which were also provided with inner chambers. The wall, up to 3.9 m wide, consisted of two shells of ashlar stones, which had been raised around a pounded cast mortar core made of rubble stones using a mortar mixture of sand, lime and animal blood as a binding agent. Its remains are still in situ in some sections six to eight meters high and above the Roman ground level. Mainly demolition material, probably from previous buildings, was used for its construction. In the brick bands typical of this time to stabilize the outer wall facing ( brick penetration ), u. a. a considerable amount of roof tiles ( tegulae ), and the foundation walls of the east gate are mostly made of second-hand material. It had a 3.3 m wide passage and was flanked by two U-towers. Traces of a moat could be observed in front of the western wall.

Interior development: So far only two buildings of the interior development could be detected or examined. In addition to the camp bath ( Balineum ) in the eastern part, remains of the wall of the flag sanctuary ( Aedes ) and two side rooms of the commandant's office ( Principia ) were found in the north of the area. The bathing building was excavated around the middle of the 19th century in the southeast of the fort area, approx. 15 m in front of the east wall. A total of four rooms were uncovered: Room 1 (dimensions: approx. 3.60 × 6.40 m) and Room 2 (3.35 × 6.40 m). They are both equipped with a hypocaust that was heated by a praefurnium in the east . Room 1 is to be interpreted as a caldarium with the alvei in a rectangular niche (still in front of the praefurnium, approx. 2.70 × 1.50 m) and in an apse on the south side (approx. 4.60 m) . The function of rooms 3 (approx. 3.60 × 6.40 m) and 4 (approx. 3.35 × 6.40 m) has remained unclear. Room 4 could possibly have been heated with a hose heater, which may have been installed later. Barry Cunliffe , however, interprets this finding as a praefurnium , but his thesis does not provide an explanation for four rows of stones running parallel to one another, which are more likely to be interpreted as the cheeks of hot air ducts. The bath was probably built at the same time as the fort. Corresponding findings that could provide more detailed information are missing.

garrison

The following crew units are known for Lemanis or could have stayed there for a certain time:

Time position Troop name comment
1st – 2nd Century AD? Classis Britannica
(the British fleet) 		In late antiquity the British fleet was probably under the command of the Comes on the Saxon coast. Only roof tiles marked CL.BR indicate the presence of naval personnel in Lemanis . Subsequently, during the excavations of Roach-Smith in 1850, a limestone altar dedicated to the sea god Neptune and used as a spoiler was found. It was donated in the year 133 AD by a praefectus of the Roman canal fleet, who was previously in command of a cavalry regiment in Pannonia superior (in today's Hungary ).
4th to 5th Century AD Numerus Turnacensium ,
(a band of Turnacensians) 		According to the Notitia Dignitatum , the fortress was commanded by a Praepositus in the 4th century AD and was manned by Germanic mercenaries. They came from the region around today's city of Tournai ( Tornacum ) in northern Gaul and belonged to the army of the Comes litoris Saxonici per Britanniam .

Vicus and port

The vicus , the camp village, was on the Roman road to Durovernum Cantiacorum (Canterbury). Buildings were also detectable around the harbor. Roman settlements are also suspected at nearby Ruckinge and Dymnchurch.

The Roman harbor basin, which is silted up today, is located east of the castle ruins, a few hundred meters from today's coast. In Roman times it was still at the entrance to a lagoon. A vast wetland stretched behind the pebble beach, stretching from Fairlight ( Hastings ) almost to the former Roman port.

literature

  • Charles Roach Smith: The antiquities of Richborough, Reculver and Lympne . 1850.
  • Robin George Collingwood : The Archeology of Roman Britain . Methuen, London 1930.
  • Robin George Collingwood, Richard Pearson Wright: The Roman Inscriptions of Britain. Vol. 1: Roger SO Tomlin: Inscriptions on Stone. New edition with addenda and corrigenda. Sutton, Gloucester 1995, ISBN 0-7509-0917-X .
  • John Kenneth Sinclair St. Joseph: Air Reconnaissance of Southern Britain . In: Journal of Roman Studies 43, 1953, pp. 81-97.
  • Andrew Robert Burn: The Romans in Britain - An Anthology of Inscriptions . Blackwell, Oxford 1969.
  • Stephen Johnson: The Roman forts of the Saxon Shore. St. Martin's Press, New York 1976.
  • David Johnston: The Saxon Shore journal, Research Report No. 18 . Council for British Archeology (CBA), 1977 (PDF) .
  • Barry Cunliffe : Excavations at the Roman fort at Lympne, Kent 1976-1978 . In: Britannia 11, 1980, pp. 227-288.
  • JN Hutchinson, Cynthia Poole, N. Lambert: Combined Archaeological and Geotechnical Investigations of the Roman Fort at Lympne, Kent. In: Britannia 16, 1985, pp. 209-236.
  • Alec Detsicas: The Cantiaci . Sutton, London 1987.
  • Andrew Pearson: The Roman Shore Forts. Coastal Defenses of Southern Britain . Tempus, Stroud 2002, ISBN 0-7524-1949-8 .
  • Nic Fields: Rome's Saxon Shore Coastal Defenses of Roman Britain AD 250-500 . (= Fortress 56) Osprey Books, 2006, ISBN 978-1-84603-094-9 .
  • Manfred Philipp: Fort baths in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire . Dissertation, text volume I, Innsbruck 1999.
  • Edward Nicholas Bromhead: The landslip-damaged Roman fort at Lympne in SE England, Geological Society, London, Special Publications No. 473, 2019, pp. 31–45.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ ITER IV: "the route from Londinium to Portus Lemanis - 68,000 steps"; Thomas Codrington: Roman Roads in Britain . London 1903 .
  2. ↑
    • Itinerarium Antonini 473 6-7 (Iter IV): Ad Portum Lemanis
    • Geographer of Ravenna 106 35  : Lemanis
    • Tabula Peutigeriana: Lemanio / Lemauio
    • Notitia Dignitatum : XXVIII 5 : Lemannis
  3. ^ Matthias Springer: The Saxons . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 978-3-17-016588-5 , p. 33, Nic Fields 2006, p. 24.
  4. ↑ Manfred Philipp 1999, p. 128, Barry Cunliffe, Classical archeology , 1980, p. 257; Stephen Johnson 1976, p. 95.
  5. ↑ CIL 7, 18 = The Roman inscriptions of Britain RIB 66 ; CBA Report 18: The Saxon Shore , p. 29.
  6. ↑ Praepositus numeri Turnacensium, Lemannis , Notitia Dignitatum Occ. XXVIII 15 .