Overall          no stars  Very little to see – need to use your imagination

Display         1 *  Occasional tours of the sites are provided by tourist info

Access           1 *  Easy to walk round the streets but need to use your imagination

Atmosphere no stars  Hard to imagine what the fortress looked like

Other             no stars   If only the Lottery Bid to display the fine baths had come off!

In c55 CE the Roman invasion force established a Legionary Fortress for the Legio II Augusta.  It is usually thought that this legion had been active in conquering the South West Peninsula and the tribes of the Durotriges and Dumnonii, initially under the command of the future Emperor Vespasian.

The II Augusta presence in Exeter is confirmed by a dolphin antefix from the baths, dated to about 60CE, made from the same mould as an antefix from Caerleon.

The fortress was 17ha (42 acres) in extent and the excavations that have taken place show it to have been a classic first Century playing card design with barracks, granaries and workshops built in timber.

The only stone building was a magnificent bath house, supplied by an aquaduct through the Porta Decumana.  The hot room (caldarium) and the warm room (tempidarium) have been excavated, and there was an exercise yard (palaestra) where a cockfighting pit has been found.  Alas the remains outside the West Door of the magnificent medieval Cathedral were covered over and a recent lottery bid to re-excavate and display them failed.

II Augusta remained at Isca Dumnoniarum for approximately 20 years, presumably pacifiying the Dumnonii, before departing for the Silurian front in South Wales, settling finally into another Isca (Caerleon).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above finds of a legionary dagger (pugio) and more carved antefixes from the bath roof are in the Exeter Museum RAMM.

The Legionary Fortress was connected to coastal shipping supply by subsidiary fort at Topsham on the River Exe Estuary.   There was a supply depot at St Loyes between Topsham and the Legionary Fortress.

In about 75CE, the Fortress appears to have been handed over to the civilian Civitas (self governing tribe) of the Dumnonii, in an apparently brilliantly successful example of turning hostile Celtic tribes into Romano-Britons – or at least transforming the tribal leadership.   A policy Tacitus set out clearly in his hagiographical biography of Britannia Governor Julius Agricola (77-85CE).  

In order, by a taste of pleasures, to reclaim the natives from that rude and unsettled state which prompted them to war, and reconcile them to quiet and tranquillity, he [Agricola] incited them, by private instigations and public encouragements, to erect temples, courts of justice, and dwelling-houses…..He was also attentive to provide a liberal education for the sons of their chieftains, preferring the natural genius of the Britons to the attainments of the Gauls; and his attempts were attended with such success, that they who lately disdained to make use of the Roman language, were now ambitious of becoming eloquent….At length they gradually deviated into a taste for those luxuries which stimulate to vice; porticos, and baths, and the elegancies of the table; and this, from their inexperience, they termed politeness, whilst, in reality, it constituted a part of their slavery.

Tacitus, Agricola 21

The stone built legionary baths were presumably too luxurious for the civilian Civitas and were demolished.