GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
So is this your inner sanctum Robin?

ROBIN BIRLEY
It's one of them. There are four or five hidden around the building. But there's quite a lot of material here.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
All from Vindolanda?

ROBIN BIRLEY
Oh yes, there's nothing except Vindolanda here. I mean we have a vast storage problem with leather boots and shoes. We've got about two and a half thousand of them.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
And what's this? This is very small.

ROBIN BIRLEY
Well this is a little child's boot, and underneath it are the iron studs. All the footwear has these studs. And this little child is no more than three years old.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
What's happened with the back of the shoe here? It actually looks rather squashed to me.

ROBIN BIRLEY
Yes, just look at it, at the angle of the heel. He's been going over on his heel, scuffing his feet, the little so and so - or, it may have been her, I have to say I don't know the sex of this one!

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Now how does that kind of material survive here?

ROBIN BIRLEY
Well, we've got these anaerobic conditions here. The Roman timber buildings were demolished every ten years or so, sealing the ground with clay, building again, and going on and on. This stops the oxygen getting in, therefore no bacteria, and therefore it's like a sort of deep freeze.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
What about human decoration, embellishment that sort of thing?

ROBIN BIRLEY
Have a look at some of this stuff here. I don't know whether you'd count it as jewellery, but these so called brooches.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Its absolutely beautiful. It looks like a safety pin.

ROBIN BIRLEY
Yes, it's a trumpet brooch, and still in working order. Actually, the spring's still good. Those would normally be in a pair, joined together by bronze wire. They go on either side, fitting your cloak or your toga over your under garment.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
As well as everyday objects, the excavations at Vindolanda have also turned up a huge archive, giving a remarkably vivid picture of life in the fort in the years leading up to the building of the wall.

ROBIN BIRLEY
Our speciality here are of course the Roman documents.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Actual pieces of paper?

ROBIN BIRLEY
(Handling a writing tablet)
Well, the equivalent. It's very, very thin specially prepared pieces of wood, a millimetre thick or perhaps a touch more, and in this case it's got ink writing. You can just vaguely pick it up on that side.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
What have they told you about the garrison here and the life?

ROBIN BIRLEY
They've told us a fantastic amount, some of it fairly mundane: the fact that some of the troops are receiving parcels from home, which include boots and shoes - which you'd expect - and also underpants. That's quite nice. That's the first evidence that the Roman soldiers wore underpants. We would expect them to do so, but that is the evidence.

One of the big surprises was to find that the commanding officer here has his wife and children and slaves with him on the site. When you read their correspondence you would think they were sitting in adjacent cities on the Italian mainland writing to one another. There isn't a hint in any of them of any problems at all. We've got now seventy six, seventy eight letters of our prefect, Flavius Carialis. People are writing in to him saying: 'Thanks for giving us such a wonderful holiday'. He's away hunting, he's left his hunting nets behind, he writes to say: 'Please send me my nets, particularly the big dragnets for swans, the special nets for thrushes', and so on. Horrible man!

But the other one of course is a lovely letter which is highly critical of cavalry performance by the 'Britunculi'. Now we knew they must have a slang name for the British, and there it is: Britunculi, 'Wretched Brits'.

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