(Guy talking with Lindsay Allason-Jones about the Vicus)

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
What sort of services are going to be available in this vicus?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
Roman Historian
There would have been people selling food and wine and beer and other services like laundry; somewhere to take your socks to wash; brothels, and of course there were cafes where you could stoke up on extra food. You've got to remember that the soldiers did their own cooking, there wasn't a main canteen. Each group of men would do their own cooking so if you happened to be sharing a room with a load of men who weren't very good at cooking, then in your off duty moments you're going to go off and eat solidly - oysters and chicken legs and lamb chops.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
So this is this a kind of thriving Wild West frontier town?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
More I think like Soho on a Saturday night, in that you have just about every possible colour of skin, every language spoken. It was very cosmopolitan and it would have been very different to what we see today. When you look around a fort like this and all you see is all quiet and green.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Settled country air?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
Civilised yes. Uncivilised I think is probably a good way of looking at it.

(At Housesteads Fort)

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
For me the most spectacular and atmospheric site on the Wall has to be here at Housesteads Fort: even on a windswept crag, first class facilites of all kinds were available.

JIM CROW
Archaeologist
We're standing one of the most monumental structures of the fort - the latrines. This was the communal lavatory for the soldiers.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
What, you mean truly communal? Everybody facing everybody else?

JIM CROW
So far as we can tell. There would have been stone lavatory seats, and the soldiers would have sat side by side.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
What, coming in and perhaps chewing over the days business while relieving themselves? Now obviously there aren't any flush cisterns, so how actually did it work?

JIM CROW
Well the Romans were very ingenious about this. They led water channels and drains to this point, which is the lowest part of the fort, and so the water came in and essentially flushed out the material.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
The forts were just part of a network of defences along the wall. In between the forts were turrets and milecastles, where smaller patrols would be based. Now with all those military features, it's very easy to get an impression that this place must have been a constant scene of warfare, with campaigning and fighting, as the Romans beat off the marauding Caledonians.

Well look, we've got this lovely wall and the mile castles and the turrets and the forts but what actual evidence have we got for real battles, real skirmishes, real warfare out here where we're sitting?

JIM CROW
Unlike other parts of the Empire where we've got real evidence for battles, there's virtually nothing in Britain. We've got a few historical accounts written by Romans.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
And they talk about warfare?

JIM CROW
And they talk about warfare, but they're very difficult to tie down, certainly on the Wall. It doesn't appear for instance from the majority of mile castles or turrets that they were ever destroyed by enemy action. When we excavated another milecastle recently we found a large number of gaming boards, and that ties in with what's known from excavations at turrets, where all we seem to find are large beer tankards.

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