(Aerial shots of the Wall)

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
As time went by the Wall continued to evolve into a full scale military zone, stretching across northern Britain. But even as it was being built, there was another change of plan. Stretches of brand new wall were demolished and fifteen forts were built on the cleared sites with room for a wall garrison of nearly ten thousand soldiers. With their distinctive playing card shape and formidable defences, the forts were all built to a similar plan.

They all had much the same range of buildings, a bit like a replica of a Mediterranean city, with all the amenities of urban life in this desolate setting on the margin of the Roman world.

(At Chesters Fort, entering the bath house)

Life on Hadrians Wall must have really been pretty grim and tough, especially for soldiers stationed here who'd come from warmer and drier parts of the Empire. But every fort, like here at Chesters, had a bath house. It amounted to something like a an all-purpose sauna, a swimming pool, a pub, and a gymnasium all rolled into one. You see, the Romans - like American tourists - made sure they brought all their own creature comforts with them.

This might be the edge of Empire but actually this is one of the best preserved bath houses from the whole Roman world. This is the apodyterium - the changing room - and it was in here that the Roman soldier would come to begin the whole bath experience.

He would have taken his clothes off, perhaps leaving them in cupboards in one of these niches - although actually it's possible these held statues, we're not really certain.

But whatever happened, he'd have made his way through this doorway, over this extremely worn step, worn out by centuries of Roman soldiers coming here, and made his way into the extensive suites of baths. Now the climax of the whole Roman bath experience was the caldarium or the hot steam room. And in this particular room there was a stoke hole - a furnace - just outside the wall fuelled by slaves, chucking in wood to build up an absolutely tremendous heat. The hot air would come pouring through this crack here, and underneath the floor.

I'm actually standing below the Roman floor surface, because there was a void underneath the floor around which the hot air could circulate, and it was in here that the Roman soldiers would sit around with sweat pouring off them and all the dirt from a hard day out on the Wall coming off. And their friends or their slaves would have rubbed strigils up and down their arms to scrape the dirt away.

Once that job was over then perhaps, if they were really well off, they'd rub in oils or perfumes to make themselves feel really fresh. And to finish off the whole experience they'd go to the other side of the bath house and jump into the cold plunge, the frigidarium.

(Outside Chesters Fort, in the Vicus area)

It's hard to imagine what the Britons might have made of these exotic ways, but we do know that the forts acted as magnets to the local people, who saw them - among other things - as a great business opportunity. Outside every fort you'd find a thriving shanty town, or Vicus.

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