When I first moved to Cornwall–the southwestern tip of Britain–friends told us, “The Romans never got this far. They stopped in Exeter.” They sounded so certain that I never thought to cross-check that with reality–or with the internet, which isn’t quite the same thing but on a good day might be in conversation with it. If I had, I’d have learned that a small Roman fort in Nanstallon–yes, that’s in Cornwall–was excavated between 1965 and 1969. I moved here in 2006 and–c’mon, my math is bad but even I can figure out which came first. 

In other words, some Roman presence has been documented since the 1960s. I mention that not to make my friends sound silly–anyone who puts up with me can’t be all bad–but to establish the common belief that Cornwall escaped Roman occupation.

More recently, three additional Roman forts have been found in Cornwall, as well as one possible Roman-influenced villa and a few random finds that indicate trade, influence, presence, or whatever you like along those lines. They change the picture, although we can argue about how if you like.

 

What do we know about the Romans in Cornwall? 

Not much, even with four forts and one possible Roman-influenced etc. Cornwall didn’t make it into Rome’s written accounts–at least not the ones that survived–so we have to rely on archeology, which in turn relies on interpretation. However well educated that interpretation may be, it leaves gaps.

Archeology also relies on digging in the right place and a lot of Cornwall is still un-archeologized.

With all those hesitations in place, the Roman presence looks like this: they came, they saw, they left–right after they broke some pottery, lost some coins, and built some forts and one possible Roman-influenced etc. Or most of them left anyway. The exception to that is one fort and an associated civilian town, which were occupied into the third or fourth centuries, not just for a small handful of decades.

The other forts might have been abandoned because the soldiers were needed in other places more urgently–to deal with uprisings, invasions on the far borders of the empire, efforts to conquer more territory, anything of that sort.

 

What was Rome doing in Britain anyway?

Britain had minerals, and Rome wanted them. It also had good hunting dogs (yes, seriously) and people, who could be enslaved. Yeah, the good old days. Don’t you just long for them? On top of that, Rome’s emperor, Claudius, wanted a nice little conquest to puff up his CV: it would keep the Legions on his side. 

The Legions? They were the core of his army. If they weren’t happy, they’d make sure that he wasn’t either.

So in 43 CE Rome invaded, but they landed a long way to the east of Cornwall, and a number of hostile tribes and heavy fighting stood between them. We won’t slog through all of that, just say that the nearest major military base (and later Roman civilian settlement) really did end up being in Exeter, which is 45 miles from Cornwall’s border, only they didn’t have cars back then, and the highway hadn’t been built, so those 45 miles were longer than they are now. And part of the route went over moors, which would’ve been hard traveling, so stretch those miles out a little more, please. 

 

And in Cornwall?

The forts Rome did build in Cornwall weren’t just near the mouths of rivers, they were also close to some of those nifty minerals I mentioned. Cornwall’s best known for tin and copper but has a few other minerals as well. One article mentions silver. Another talks about iron. As I researched this, AI popped up to add slate to the list, and I’ll tell you just the tiniest bit smugly that slate is not now and never has been a mineral. * 

For the record: this blog is written by a human. Every so often I wonder what an AI program would come back with if I asked it to write something in my style, but I haven’t asked. I’m not sure I want to know.

Enough of that. Tin was particularly important in both the Bronze Age (no tin, no bronze) and later, when it was needed to make pewter. Add lead to tin and you can make lovely tableware, jewelry, and statuettes, all of which the Romans liked. While you’re at it, you can give any number of people lead poisoning.

The forts were also close to the mouths of rivers, where they could control (or protect) shipping. I’m going to quote Mike Baskott, an archeologist who gave a fascinating talk to the Rame History Group (Rame’s a Cornish village), “The Romans in Cornwall.”  The talk is online and the speaker’s name isn’t on it, but someone from the group was kind enough to supply it. I’ve drawn heavily from Baskott’s talk. What he said about the forts’ location near rivers is this:

“To me this indicates a strong interest in the protection and policing of maritime trade and indeed in other areas of Britain it can be shown that the Roman navy were responsible for the transport of minerals. Since time immemorial, carriage by water has always been more economical than transport by land.” 

He speculates that part of Cornwall might have been a Roman military zone “under Imperial control.”

The soldiers who occupied the Cornish forts probably weren’t legionaries but auxiliaries–soldiers from other parts of the empire, recruited from tribes Rome had already conquered. Talk about recycling, right? You conquer one people and get them to conquer (or at least help conquer) the next one. 

Why would anyone want to be part of that? Because an auxiliary got paid. And whatever was left of him after 25 years of auxiliaring got a plot of land to farm, along with Roman citizenship for himself and his family.  **

 

The Cornish experience of the Romans

We know even less about the Cornish experience of the Romans than we do about the Roman presence in Cornwall, but we can piece together a few things. The Roman pattern was to integrate the upper echelons of conquered peoples into Roman civilian and military structures, so we can assume that in Cornwall they’d have combed through those upper echelons for anyone willing to do business. 

An archeologist for the National Trust who gives her name only as Nancy (what is it with these self-effacing archeologists?) argues that the Romans ran into serious resistance in the southwest, an area that includes Cornwall. Look at Devon, the county you have to pass through to reach Cornwall unless you swim. Or sail. Compare the number of forts with the number of undefended villas. Lots more forts than villas. Hmmm. She talks about Devon as the Romans’ version of Afghanistan–a place where the army bogged down. 

Would the same have been true in Cornwall? I’ll give you a definite maybe on that. So far, we can count four forts and only one possible Roman-influenced villa, but we shouldn’t stretch that evidence too far as we reach for a conclusion.

The Cornish had traded with mainland Europe long before the Roman invasion, so this was hardly their first exposure to outsiders, although the sheer number who came with the army would’ve been a shock, as would, Baskott says, ”the Roman army’s use of prefabricated building materials up to 4 to 6 metres in height. . . . The sheer logistical power of the Army, with cartloads of timber, metalwork weaponry and provisions moving backwards and forwards from barges moored at the new dock on the river would have been amazing.” 

But let’s set Roman ruins aside and look at the Cornish ones. What they show about ordinary life doesn’t indicate big changes in the period we’re talking about. Before the Romans showed up, people lived in round communal houses set in enclosed hamlets that were probably occupied by extended family groups. They farmed and their economy was based on barter, not currency. They built massive defensive ditches and ramparts around hill forts. 

Who were they defending against? Dunno. Baskott talks about “other communities who might raid for cattle and slaves.” They also say social standing would’ve been measured in cattle or sheep.

Is this something they’ve determined from what they’ve found or are they importing the social structures of other cultures at a similar level of complexity? I don’t know, but I thought I’d toss a pinch of doubt into the recipe. 

What changed after the Romans came? Not much. Most people continued to live in the old way, although in some places their houses took on a less communal pattern. Some of Cornwall’s hill forts were abandoned during this period. Others weren’t. And some that were abandoned were re-occupied, still during the Roman occupation. 

What does any of that mean? Fuck if I know. 

Baskott adds his own dash of doubt: “When making . . .  comments about settlement patterns I am somewhat cautious, so little excavation work has gone on in the County [that means Cornwall] that where sites have been thoroughly examined . . . these are likely to set the pattern for the whole and therefore the picture can be canted or warped.” 

So let’s not pretend to know more than is actually known.

 

Fine then. What do we know? 

Less than we’d like. More than we did. The Romans did have a presence, and soldiers, in Cornwall and they were after its minerals. For the most part they didn’t stay long, and even where they did they don’t seem to have had much impact on Cornish life. That makes Cornwall very different from England, where the inhabitants became Romano-British. Cornwall’s residents continued to be Cornish, as did their language.

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* I don’t use artificial intelligence to research or write these posts, or for anything else, but since I’m being snooty about AI’s mistakes I should, in the interests of fairness, admit that I once edited a kids’ book whose author tried to slide corned beef in as a grain product. Since this was long before AI existed, I feel safe in assuming that the author was human. And a fool.

** A warning to anyone here who reads English as a second language and wonders why I sometimes use words that can’t be found in the dictionary. I mess around with language. It keeps me from hanging out on the street corner and getting into trouble. Auxiliaring isn’t a word, or not one any dictionary recognizes. It’s me turning the noun auxiliary into a verb to hint at the dreariness of spending 25 years in the Roman army in the hope of still being able to farm by the time you get your plot of land.