Kanovium Bath-house, a Background

The bath-house was an essential part of life for the Roman soldier, as well as improving hygiene they also served as a club and somewhere for the men to meet civilians, though the winters were warmer in the 1st century A.D. the Conwy valley must have been a cold damp place to build a fort, so the baths provided something of luxury and comfort for the soldiers, especially as the narrow streets of the forts made for draughts, and the timber buildings with clay floors cannot have been pleasant places to live.  Therefore when the soldier wasn’t engaged in military duties he was probably to be found in the bath-house.

Though such an essential part of life for the soldiers bath-houses had not been constructed at forts until the time of Augustus, usually outside the auxiliary forts because there was no space allocated for other buildings in the fort plans at this time, also fire was also a factor inside the fairly cramped confines of an auxiliary fort.  Legionary fortresses however, are usually equipped with a bath building inside the fort defences, and the first one to be built has been recognized at Vindonissa, a legionary fortress in Switzerland, which dates from 25-30 A.D.  At this point bath houses had been built out of timber, with clay floors and lead sheeting providing the waterproofing, but such a building would have been a fire risk, so Claudius passed a law that bath-houses must be constructed in stone, obviously this must have involved repeated disasters at Roman settlements.  During the reign of Claudius, bath buildings became commoner in a military context, but still only at legionary sites, the legion stationed around the South Wales, Gloucestershire area, Legio 11 Augusta, has left remains of three, the Claudian baths at Exeter/Isca, the Neronian bath house at Usk, and the Flavian baths at Caerleon/Isca Silurum.  The fortress bath-houses had been constructed on a grand scale, Exeter and Caerleon’s building have Purbeck marble used in decorations, while at Chester a dull geometric mosaic was found, this can be seen at the Grosvenor Museum, and is the only mosaic from a Roman military context in Britain. .

During the 1st century A.D. the non citizen branch of the Roman army went through a process of development, during the time of Julius Caesar and his successor Augustus a relatively casual relationship had existed between the legionary and non citizen auxiliaries.  The auxilia then comprising of troop levies from client states of Rome, once the conflict had been competed the men would be allowed to return to their homes, but during most of the 1st century a transition took place, the auxilia were banded together as cohort regiments, and as such finally ‘got on the pay role’ so to speak, becoming a ‘regular’ branch of the army.  Finally during the times of Trajan and Hadrian the regiments reached their finest caliber, possibly now higher trained than the legion soldiers, who were now becoming camp bound, we now see auxilia becoming engaged in camp construction and building work, before this such tasks had been the stock in trade of the legionary.

So while at first no baths had been deemed necessary for the auxilia, but as all the different ethnic elements became absorbed into the world of Rome, the process of ‘romanisation’ ensured people craved Roman style luxuries then the bath-house became a necessity at the auxilia forts.  No bath houses are to be found at auxilia forts until the end of the 1st century AD, a fort in Scotland, Elginhaugh, abandoned 86 AD, has one recorded, while a writing tablet from Vindolanda, dating from between 95-105 AD, records that 18 soldiers had been engaged in constructing a bath-house.  Kanovium, with the late 70’s date of construction will have had a stone bath-house from the outset, due to the Claudian edict, and it is documented that many fort sites in Europe also received bath structures at the same time as Vindolanda.  These early bath-houses are known as the ‘row type’ a simple row of rooms leading on from each other, and it seems that civilians could buy use of the baths, and would have been issued lead tokens to gain access,, finds of children’s teeth and women’s jewelry in bath culverts reveal widespread use but only apparently in the morning before the furnaces reached full temperature, the great heat reached being deemed injurous to women and children.

Caerhun Bath-house Explained

The earliest Phases - The bath house at Caerhun fort was situated on the sloping field Erw y Gaer, or Castle Acre, directly beneath the east gate, which was basically a folly as there was no road exiting the fort as it had no possible destination other than the bath-house and river, the bath house was reached from the gate by an unpaved path.  Situated in a large man made terrace the building utilizes several water courses which exited the fort at this point.  During excavations a large cistern had been found in a shed type building VIII near to the principia, thought to have been a water tank for the garrisons mounts, it is now likely to be thought as a major source of the bath houses water, it one metre deep, 10 by 18 feet in size, and was lined with clay, just a bit over engineered for a water butt, it seems very similar to two similar cisterns excavated in Roman London recently (Time Team Channel 4 TV) these still had the remains of a fairly technically advanced pumping wheel present in each cistern, dating from the Flavian rebuilding of Londinium, they would be similar in date to the cistern at Kanovium (first timber fort 78 AD) high tech innovation at the time and capable of supplying the baths with a profuse water supply.  Also a clean water drain exited from beneath the east gate this also likely to be heading for the baths beneath the field of Erw y Gaer

Situated on its terrace the building lies south-north, with the business end of the building, the furnace, at the south, or up river of the Conwy and the Carneddau mountain range, which is subject to air turbulence, helped to utilize the down draught effect of the mountains and river, which would have been necessary for the baths to reach the radically hot temperature required for the very hot rooms.  Seen today as extensive footings with much building rubble, Chester sandstone, local shales and the characteristic red tile and brick in evidence, many tiny rooms can be viewed including wall thickneses and maybe even some doorways, which do not feature on any of the buildings in the forts plan, nettles often obscure the remains in summer, but the remains reveal a complex building over many different phases and of lengthy occupation, and as Garrett says in his Roman Frontier in Wales ‘the building continued to be used by the civil settlement long after the military had abandoned the site’.

Constructed presumably as soon as priorities allowed during the late 70’s the original structure was of the simple ‘row’ type arrangement, basically the bather started the session by entering at the hot rooms and utilized the various rooms with the variations in temperature.  This can be seen in image 1 on the previous page, the simple black block representing the earliest structure, walls in red are later, but no construction dates are known.  Use of the various rooms are as follows.

A. Furnace Chamber - This provided the extreme heat needed to power the channel type hypocausts, the furnace would have probably been kept burning 24 hours a day, and would have required constant stoking and refilling, large amounts of wood (and possibly coal) would have been required.  Situated directly above the furnace was a metal water tank, the boiling water and steam utilized for the hot bath with the humidity element.  The twin supports for the water tank can be seen above the letter A in the diagram.  The furnace channels often blocked due to the continual use and often children (or very small slaves) had to be sent inside to clear away the obstructions.

B.  Hot dry room - The hottest room in the bath-house because it was situated directly on the furnace, receiving all the heat via the channels of the hypocausts, the heat was drawn through the building via the hollow box flue tiles which completely lined the walls of rooms B and C.  The hollow box section bricks, which were rather like the modern ‘breeze block’, and also a design used today in the building of continental hotels, very cheap but also very strong when incorporated with a metal framework, these bricks formed a wall skin which not only distributed the furnace heat, but also allowed the combustion gases to be expelled from the building.  Fitting together the bricks were rendered invisible by the fact they where rendered with a heat and damp resistant mortar.  As in modern plastering work the surface has to be keyed prior to plastering, so the Roman bricks received key scratches while still in the unfired state, either with a roller wheel or simply with random scratches done with a knife blade.  Fragments of these bricks always still have the engraved scratches and bits of these are common throughout the area of the bath-house and can even be found out in the river marsh.
 

C. Warm damp room - Using water channeled directly from the boiling tank above the furnace, around the walls of the building and into a very high temperature small plunge pool, this room utilized the humidity effect produce by the boiling water.  The ceiling was barrel vaulted and moisture was encouraged to form on the walls, the round section of the ceiling allowing water to drain down the walls.  This room was still receiving the fairly latent heat from the furnace chamber, the building being 65 feet long at this stage and the fire was still fairly close by, this room provided the sauna type affect.

D&E  Cold wet rooms - Out of the heat range of the furnace and containing no box flue tiles these were the cold rooms of the bath house and contained a cold plunge pool, the Roman liked the variations in temperature and the effects on the skin, the various temperatures being used in rapid conjunction.  The plunge pool would have received water from a natural spring, and also from an aqueduct, (which may possibly be the linear feature running parallel to the road beyond the vicus and the cemetery, the gradient being adequate).  Excavation of a workshop or stable VIII revealed a water cistern, the building fronted on to the via principalis and is directly above the bath-house, presumably via an aqueduct linked to the water tank of the furnace, another clean water drain exited the fort above the bath-house, this may also have been utilizes.  There is no evidence of this cistern or the spring now, this would be now in the graveyard, possible drained off years ago.

These are the simple rooms of the row type bath-house, at some later stage the following rooms had been added, date unknown.

M&H&R -  There is no access to rooms M&H so they must represent a later add on.  Evidence of floor pilae and the remains of an other possible furnace from these rooms point to them being additional hot rooms (hello Welsh climate?) and could possibly have been the room which Griffith commented on the floors being fairly intact.  Description of room R is vague in construction, date and use but looks like being a porch or verandah built to keep the bad weather out of the stoke hole and furnace, it must have been open or else it could have cut out the ‘draw’ effect of the stoke hole and stopped the bath-house functioning correctly.

Later Phases of the Building

The later phases turned out to be very difficult to entangle, due mostly in part to the damage by early digs, but also because the building was very developed with many ‘tacked on’ add ons, but according to The Roman Frontier in Wales, Nash-Williams/Jarrett, 1969 all extensions are to be found where expected, and reflect a long and busy life of the building by the military garrison and the civil settlement.  Next rooms to be constructed after M&H are -

G. S. Q - These three rooms had been built at a different period than F&P appear to be heated rooms with yet another furnace, and possibly another heated plunge pool, built possibly as an annex to the first row type structure.

F&P - These two rooms are again heated as pilae again found at this section, powered by the addition furnace in G&S which was modified for the purpose, therefore F&P must represent the third main stage of the building or possibly fourth.  Heat seeming a very important consideration in view of the mountain and river climate around Kanovium.

I, K, L, H. - I appears to be the entrance vestibule into the late part of the building, H, K, L seems to be the changing room complex, it may have featured arched niches in the walls, as at Chesters which would either have contained a clothing locker or a statue of a deity in the niche.  This entrance complex is common in 3rd and fourth century bath-houses at Hadrian’s Wall forts, RFW claims such additions indicate a civilian input, if Kanovium’s vicus was still present at this time it indicates it would have been a high status example, inscriptions from Wall forts indicate that a council would have been responsible for such work, to have a council the vicus would be quite important and developed and not just a collection of mud huts outside the fort gates.

The buildings with all the different additions is now starting to look bizarre, and appears to be a ‘botched’ affair so possibly may represent unskilled civilian input, during the 3rd century the design of the Roman bath suite had developed considerably from the row type, a new type became current the ‘ring type’ that is rather than simply visiting rooms from end to end as in the row bath the person now rotated around the building.  Though the Caerhun building attempts to have some of these later developments it remained a row type, this surely must represent civilian input, without the unlimited recourses of the military, the vici have been forced to continue development of the building at a design and quality of less than acceptable, such poor building technique can be seen in many late villas, towers built on the down hill slope of a hill without adequate footings.

Finally, the bath house must have been prone to flooding, at a very low level next to the river Conwy high tides or floods enable the river to almost reach the building now, and the dike directly to the front of the building may surely be Roman, it is difficult to see who would have gone to the trouble (though these dikes are not uncommon on the Conwy another being viewed beneath Tal y Cafn bridge). The dike and bath-house terrace can be viewed on Aerial Shots page, image top left, dike is bottom right. The dike had been partially removed in 1995 and was found to be made of Roman occupation materials, dirty mixed clay, bones and charcoal with many large and unrolled fragments of Roman pottery.  The river marsh in front of the bath house also contains Roman material which is hard to explain as surely the marsh would have been smaller and lower during Roman times .

© Kanovium Project