Roman Plumbing At Vindolanda

Vindolanda is one of the greatest sources of information about life at Hadrian's Wall. The Birley family, which has mined this rich site for generations, has found artifacts of every conceivable kind here. Animal bones, the skulls of decapitated Celtic warriors, wigs and shoes, swords and arrows - even bound stacks of letters - are displayed in the Vindolanda Museum. Those letters may tell us the most of all - officers' wives discussing upcoming visits, soldiers writing home for more socks, veterans recounting war stories - the minutiae of Roman frontier life as it was actually lived. The ruins themselves supplement this picture with fine detail of their own. The Roman troops had baths here, with heated floors and drainage channels, some of the latter shown below. Just as we would, the Romans strove to make Vindolanda their home away from home.