ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE with baths ; and the store-houses, one or more long buttressed buildings fitted with damp-proof basements, in which traces of wheat stores have occasionally been discovered. The remainder of the fort was occupied by barracks and other apartments for the use of the soldiers. The barracks, when built in stone, were usually long, narrow edifices divided up into numerous rooms, fronted by a colonnade (see fig. 3,0), and terminated at one end by a piece of building as broad as the other rooms and colonnade together. But the employment of stone for these barracks is not at all universal. We find it on Hadrian's Wall and in many British forts, in which the whole interior, except the streets and one or two open spaces, is covered by stone buildings. But in other British forts wood was freely used, and on the German frontier stone-built barracks seem hardly ever to occur. Here again, therefore, we seem to have two types efforts, one simpler than the other. (See figs. 2 and 3.) The interior of the fort accommodated only the fighting men and their weapons, stores, and horses. Other elements of the soldier's life found their place outside the ramparts. One constant feature was the bath- house, often mis-described as a ' villa.' It was a detached building some 50 or 100 yards from the fort, perhaps 40 by 90 feet in extent, fitted with the usual arrangements of the Roman bath a furnace to heat the air, hot rooms providing vapour baths, a small tank for the cold-water plunge, which completed the bathing process, dressing-rooms, and offices (fig. 7). Not infrequently two or three shrines stood near, and some- times a cave of Mithras. Here, too, was the civil settlement of camp followers, women and traders, and perhaps an old soldier or two and a few slaves and natives. Such in its main features was the fort occupied by auxiliary troops. The legionary fortress was much like it. It was, indeed, only the auxiliary fort magnified and enlarged. The two together formed the chief elements in the Roman occupation of disturbed and dangerous districts. Other elements might be added frontier walls, as between Tyne and Solway, or blockhouses along unsafe highways. But these belong to special conditions of place or of time. The fort and fortress remain the primary and permanent features. In any unquiet region throughout the Empire, especially on its frontiers, we may expect to find a few legionary fortresses and many auxiliary forts. That, substantially, is what we do find in the uplands of Britain. 2. SKETCH OF ROMAN DERBYSHIRE Derbyshire belongs to the hill-country of Britain. Its dominant physical feature is an elevated limestone plateau which covers most of its area. The highest points of this plateau are in the north, where the Peak and Bleaklow summits exceed 2,000 feet. Thence, varied by undulating downs and scored by sudden precipitous valleys, it sinks gradually and irregularly towards the south and east. In general it maintains an elevation of over 900 feet. Its climate is cold. Its soil produces little 199
