Maybe, just maybe
Hard to envisage, but where those cattle are grazing in a field adjacent to Windermere lake at Ambleside there was once a thriving Romano-British fort built under Hadrian’s rule to guard the Roman road from Brougham to Ravenglass and to act as a supply base. Stationed there was a garrison of about 500 soldiers, and its setting on the northern shore of Lake Windermere made it strategically vital to the Roman occupation of Cumbria. Coins found at the site suggest that it was occupied continuously for almost three centuries and only abandoned well into the 4th century AD when Roman rule in Britain ended.
Some time ago because I know my ancestry is ‘complicated’ I took a DNA test and discovered that the country where most people share my haplogroup [group of people who all share a common ancestor] today is Jordan. Those in the UK are under 1%, so how could that be?
It was common practice for the Romans to garrison their forts from across the Roman world. For example, we know that the Roman fort Aballava near the western end of Hadrian’s Wall had a garrison of about 500 Roman soldiers that included a unit recruited in Morocco called the Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum [named after the emperor Aurelian] stationed there in the third and fourth centuries. Outside the fort was a civilian settlement where retired soldiers lived with their wives and families and children. It is believed that so much of their blood and culture must have been African that their presence there is considered to be the first known African community in Britain.
So maybe, just maybe, my ancestor from the Middle East once wore a Roman uninform.
Maybe, just maybe
Hard to envisage, but where those cattle are grazing in a field adjacent to Windermere lake at Ambleside there was once a thriving Romano-British fort built under Hadrian’s rule to guard the Roman road from Brougham to Ravenglass and to act as a supply base. Stationed there was a garrison of about 500 soldiers, and its setting on the northern shore of Lake Windermere made it strategically vital to the Roman occupation of Cumbria. Coins found at the site suggest that it was occupied continuously for almost three centuries and only abandoned well into the 4th century AD when Roman rule in Britain ended.
Some time ago because I know my ancestry is ‘complicated’ I took a DNA test and discovered that the country where most people share my haplogroup [group of people who all share a common ancestor] today is Jordan. Those in the UK are under 1%, so how could that be?
It was common practice for the Romans to garrison their forts from across the Roman world. For example, we know that the Roman fort Aballava near the western end of Hadrian’s Wall had a garrison of about 500 Roman soldiers that included a unit recruited in Morocco called the Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum [named after the emperor Aurelian] stationed there in the third and fourth centuries. Outside the fort was a civilian settlement where retired soldiers lived with their wives and families and children. It is believed that so much of their blood and culture must have been African that their presence there is considered to be the first known African community in Britain.
So maybe, just maybe, my ancestor from the Middle East once wore a Roman uninform.