Week Five: Oswestry and the Roman Army
Oswestry’s spectacular Roman marching camp is yet another piece of local heritage we don’t celebrate enough. The excavations in 1977 unearthed the remains of a spectacularly well-preserved Roman military site, with evidence that the camp was used and reused throughout the Roman occupation of Britain. Features such as the ovens built into the early phases of one ditch, and the large wooden gateway – one side of which was blocked off – make the Rhyn Park marching camp both notable and worth making something of. There is some material from the excavation in the Oswestry Town Museum, and the excavation report is available online – but the original excitement of those 1977 excavations has long passed, and Rhyn Park’s archaeological past seems in danger of being forgotten.
There’s no pressing need to do more excavation at the site, so more archaeology perhaps isn’t the answer. But what about more heritage? What about a timber gateway (rather like the one at The Lunt Roman Fort) down at Park Hall? A Rhyn Park reconstruction there would make the connection between Oswestry’s ancient military heritage and its historical military heritage. It could become the focus for a whole range of educational and economic opportunities that would connect Oswestry with the rest of Roman Britain, tapping into the visitors that at the moment bypass Oswestry in favour of Wroxeter or Chester. A Rhyn Park replica could even become the home of a re-enactment Legio Oswestria!
Roman Britain is an important part of our history and archaeology, and it’s a shame that Oswestry doesn’t benefit more from its links with this period. There are few market towns in the country with such a wealth and diversity of heritage monuments and science; it’s one of the things that makes Oswestry unique. Their contribution to the educational, economic and cultural life of the town could be immense – but it’s local interest and enthusiasm that is the catalyst.
What would it take to bring Rhyn Park back into the limelight?
I wonder, would a Roman army match as far as Corwen in a day? Not only do we have Caer Drewen, the little sister to Oswestry hill fort, but the marching camp at Glanyrafon. There are a lot of links between ancient Oswestry and d Corwen….. worth exploring more? Yours Phill
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I suppose there’s only one way to find out: establish a Legio Oswestria and send them off marching in the direction of Corwen! But I suppose what the presence of Rhyn Park really raises is the question of how it related to all the hillforts and marching camps around. Should we be looking for evidence of “Romanisation” in the Oswestry/Glanyrafon/Pen Plenau area? How might we look for that archaeologically – but also, how might we start thinking about it in other ways? I’m quite an advocate of the idea that art, fiction, poetry (yes, even comics!) can help archaeology by exploring gaps that exist in the data, and prompting leaps of imagination that spur us to direct excavation, survey or analysis in unexpected directions. Schliemann is one kind of example of this, but one could also look at the work of landscape artists and the way they prompted archaeologists to think “outside the site”. Projects like Mike Parker-Pearson’s Stonehenge Riverside Project has been a great beneficiary of that new way of looking at landscapes. Not sure how one might go about this in practice, but it’s something worth thinking about – not just for the Roman period, but for all archaeological periods in our borderlands area, perhaps.