Monument record 726 - Lactodorum

Roman town. Referred to by the Antonine Itinerary as Lactodorum, a ditched and walled town

{1} Article in the Sunday Telegraph (11/2/96) "The past pops up in Towcester" providing synopsis of "The story of an English Country Town".

{2} Towcester is probably the most extensively recorded of the 14 nucleated settlements included in this survey that definitely or probably acted as local or regional centres in the Roman period. Located astride Watling Street between the major settlement at Whilton Lodge (Bannaventa) to the north west and Fenny Stratford (Magiovinium) to the south east, Towcester was, along with Irchester and Water Newton (Durobrivae) one of largest and most significant small towns in the county. Lying on both a key strategic route through the province and at a junction with roads to a number of other small towns in the region, Towcester acted as a local craft, commercial and religious centre that probably also played a role as a focus of local administration and taxation.
Towcester’s layout seems to owe much to local considerations of topography and drainage and the need to accommodate an emergent pattern of regional roads joining Watling Street. Significant parts of the core area were well established by the later first century AD and occupation covered all the identified suburbs by the mid-late second century AD. The majority of the known settlement lay to the west of Watling Street, occupying a spur of land surrounded on three sides by low lying marshy ground on the floodplains of the Tove and Silverstone Brook. Across the watercourses to both north and south further ribbon development suburbs developed along Watling Street, though their extent and form is still poorly understood. Further suburbs along the modern Brackley Road and Alchester Road extended ribbon development into the surrounding agricultural landscapes to the west and south west of the town.
A reasonable amount can be said about the town’s historical development though knowledge is patchy for some areas. Watling Street and immediately neighbouring areas appear to have been laid out in the third quarter of the first century AD, quite probably in a way that was designed to intersect with a pre-existing Late Iron Age focus of settlement and possibly religious significance located on and immediately to the west of the floodplain of the Tove.
During the late first to early second century the remaining routes between Watling Street and other emerging centres such as Brackley/Evenley, Alchester, Irchester and/or Duston were formalised and additional buildings constructed close to their frontages. During the course of the second century in particular, the construction of stone founded probable strip buildings gradually filled the road frontages with simple shops, workshops and houses. Close to the core of the town the later first century saw the development of a number of important religious buildings alongside other substantial buildings of uncertain function but which may have been a mansio, bath house, large private residence or even a public building.
In the later second century AD the core spur of land and the junction of the Alchester Road, Watling street and possibly Brackley road were enclosed within a large earthen rampart and ditch defensive circuit. These defences may have incorporated an integral stone wall at this time or that may have been added at an as yet unknown date later in the Roman period. In the fourth century the town’s defences were further augmented with bastions or corner towers. The construction of these defences clearly cut through a number of existing areas of settlement and may also have cut through several side roads in the town, cutting off parts of the interior from the surrounding land. The overall effect of this is not clear but there is some suggestion from the south western quarter that this led to the dereliction of some areas behind the main road frontages.
Around the fringes of the settlement a series of enclosures defined small agricultural plots and stock yards that periodically seem to have been used for small clusters of burials close to their boundaries. The settlement was clearly occupied up to the end of the fourth century
(Ref 1.0) TOPOGRAPHY & GEOLOGY. Towcester lies on a low rise largely on Upper Lias clay but with a small area of river gravel on the southern boundary of the settlement, within a loop formed by the confluence of the River Tove to the north and west with Silverstone Brook to the south. The choice of site was clearly dominated not by the normal factors of permeable geology and good agricultural land which dominate the distribution of medieval and earlier settlement in Northamptonshire. The choice of the site of Towcester seems likely to have been determined to a large degree by the river crossing of the major road where it passed through the broader valley area. This might explain why the Saxon focus probably shifted from Towcester to Greens Norton only returning when defensive and commercial factors once more became dominant.
The vast majority of the catchment of the Tove, which dominates the hinterland of the town, is a boulder clay covered plateau. This was always poor quality agricultural land which for much of the past remained covered by extensive areas of woodland. In contrast, the valley of the Tove itself has exposed areas of permeable geology where pre-Iron Age activity was concentrated and where right through to the post medieval period settlement and agricultural wealth was concentrated.
(Ref 2.1) Prehistoric origins for the settlement at Towcester have long been suspected. It has been suggested, largely on the basis of scattered finds of residual Iron Age pottery, that the pre-Roman settlement was as extensive as the Roman town. There is also a suggestion, based on the duro element of the Roman place-name (OE fort on low ground), that the settlement may have been fortified, although no trace of an early defensive circuit has been found . However, surviving features relating to this pre-Conquest settlement appear to have been largely confined to the east of the present town in the area between the line later taken by Watling Street and the floodplain of the River Tove.
(Ref 2.2) The earliest subsequent occupation can be dated to the mid-late first century AD when roadside boundary ditches and enclosures seem to have been laid out close to the newly constructed major route of Watling Street in what subsequently becomes the core of the town. Clear evidence for buildings and occupation dating to the mid-first century AD is, perhaps, surprisingly scant. Evidence for the early development of the settlement is largely confined to the widespread presence of residual mid-first century material in contexts usually dated to the Flavian period (the AD70s).
The true period of development of the large nucleated settlement at Towcester occurred, as elsewhere, during the last quarter of the first century and the first half of the second century AD. Although we know very little about the nature of occupation along Watling Street within the core of the town, the ubiquity of late first and second century pottery recovered from many of the present properties suggests that the main frontages were flourishing. By the mid second century most of the known area of the town was already occupied.
(Ref 3.3) The range and number of buildings recorded across the Roman town of Towcester represent an important if often fragmentary corpus nationally. Several potentially very important public buildings have been suggested to lie within the defended area of the town. Most unfortunately are known from early or highly fragmentary observations and thus remain difficult to interpret with any certainty. They nevertheless represent a suite of substantial and clearly well appointed buildings that are rare within small towns nationally and very rare from the county.
(Ref 3.4) Evidence for craft production and the study of trade at Towcester is abundant though of variable quality. Towcester, having had more published excavations than any other roman small town in the county is comparatively well served with specialist reports on artefactual and ecofactual evidence to support study of its economic activity. This is though partly hampered by the early date of some of the main excavations and their uneven distribution focused as they are predominantly on the west and south west of the town.
The quantified assemblages from the core of the town indicate that in the second century at least nearly 50 percent of Towcester's pottery was of regional (>20km away) or imported origin. This figure is well above that found at contemporary rural sites and is high even by urban standards (c.f. Cooper forthcoming). Whilst, as everywhere in Britain, this proportion drops away significantly during the third and fourth centuries it strongly indicates the significance of the town as a focus for wider pottery supply and exchange, probably linked to trade in a wider range of largely archaeologically invisible agricultural products.
(Ref 3.5.2) Literally hundreds of burials have been noted from many locations across the town. Unfortunately, most are either poorly or completely undocumented in detail and so cannot be interpreted with confidence. Despite this there are clearly areas around the outskirts of the town that were foci for burial if not necessarily formal cemeteries of the kind excavated at Ashton and elsewhere. No burials have been found in trial trenching anywhere along the eastern side of the A5 during work carried out in 1986 or the 1990's.
(Ref 3.1) At present the direction of any side roads to the east or south-east of Watling Street towards Irchester are unknown and it is difficult now to see where such a route would run given that no such evidence was encountered in the recent excavations on the floodplain of the River Tove east of the town defences. The small scale and early date of most archaeological interventions in this area, alongside the degree of destruction caused by the continued medieval and post-medieval occupation of this part of the town mean that our knowledge of any roads or track ways in this area is very limited.
(Ref 3.6) The location of the town at Towcester within the confluence of the Tove and Silverstone Brook combined with the survival of pockets of deeply buried and sometimes waterlogged deposits suggests that the potential for study of the immediate environment or land use strategies in its vicinity is good. Unfortunately the early of several of the key excavations combined with the small scale evaluation based nature of subsequent work mean that few paleoenvironmental analyses have been carried out.
(Ref 2.3) The latest recorded coins from the town, however, are all late fourth century issues, which suggests that urban life was beginning to break down before the official end of Roman administration in AD410. Although there is structural evidence for occupation well into the late 4th century at several locations, especially along the Alchester Road suburbs, evidence for subsequent Anglo-Saxon occupation into the fifth century AD is absent.
There is generally an absence of evidence for activity during the Early-Middle Saxon period, finds from the area , suggest that occupation may have shifted away from the former Roman town by the early 6th century, though other evidence is unclear.

{10} The Roman town has from the evidence of the Antonine Itinerary been identified as Lactodorum, a fact now universally accepted. Excavation has shown that the town was in the 1st-2nd centuries an open settlement on Watling street. In the late 2nd, early 3rd century the settlement was ditched and walled, and reduced in area. After destruction in the late 4th century the town was deserted (See Map diagram).

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle records the fortification of Towcester after an attack by the Danes in 921. Excavation found this wall of Edward the Elder set in the debris of the Roman wall.

The town was retained by the crown after the Norman conquest, and soon after a castle was built (Bury Hill).

In the 17th century Towcester was again walled on the Roman line, this time by Prince Rupert. The works were slighted in 1644 when the town was abandoned to the parliamentarians.

Remains of the ditch at the NW corner resurveyed at 1:2500 - the only surveyable Roman feature.

Name 'LACTODVRVM' accepted for 4th edition Roman Britain Map.

Roman town of Lactodorum (SP 689481). [Detailed account including historical summary pre-Roman to C17th, details of roads, defences, town interior, and extra mural settlement, based on bibliographic references up to 1978 and local information. RCHM plans].

{11}FINDS; 1976/7; FLOOD RELIEF SCHEME; SKELETON OBSERVED; INFO: T.SHIRLEY (1);

{12} Towcester has a long history, extending back almost 2,000 years to the founding of Lactodorum in the years following the Roman invasion in AD43, and settlement in the vicinity of the town can be traced back even further, into the Iron Age. The evaluation provided further evidence of the town’s history, including tentative evidence for the Roman town’s eastern defences.
The earliest remains dated to the Roman period and included the foundations and lower courses of a substantial stone wall (possibly part of a building), a robbed out wall, a possible yard surface, and inhumation burial and a ditch. All of these lay to the west of Moat Lane, to the rear of properties fronting onto the Roman military road now called Watling Street. This suggests that the intra-mural area immediately within the town’s eastern defences, following their construction in the late C2nd AD, was less densely developed. It was probably an area of back streets lined with largely timber-built houses within plots of land, with most of the main stone-built civic buildings and domestic residences lying close to Watling Street. Properties at the eastern margins of the C2nd town are likely to have been demolished to make way for the defences when they were constructed c.AD 170.
The C2nd to C4th pottery recovered accords with the period of Roman expansion and development in the town and its subsequent demise in the C4th/early C5th.
The inhumation burial found is undated but was aligned north-south and was cut by a ditch that contained a well-preserved assemblage of Roman pottery, so is likely to be Roman in origin. Although Roman cemeteries were located outside the town boundaries, isolated burials, especially those of infants, can be found in urban settings (although juveniles and adult burials are comparatively rare.
Tentative evidence for the town’s eastern defences was found in the area of the mill car park, although no single feature or deposit could be ascribed to the Roman period. However, given the likely size of the Roman town ditch and the scale of subsequent activity in the area its is likely that the Roman ditch was still an open ditch into the medieval period if not later, and would therefore have contained medieval deposits.

{15} Towcester was the site of the Roman town of Lactodorum, located alongside the Roman road known as Watling Street. This was one of the largest and most significant small Roman towns in Northamptonshire. Significant parts of the town core were established by the late C1st AD, with the majority of the known settlement lying to the west of Watling Street.
Ribbon development also took place along Watling Street, resulting in the creation of a northern suburb, and a further suburb to the south along the Kings Sutton Roman road, now followed by the present day Brackley Road. The discovery of burials alongside the Brackley Road in the early C20th would also seem to indicate the presence of a cemetery here outside the built-up area of Lactodorum.
An agricultural landscape probably lay outside the Roman town and its suburbs, suggested by the results of a metal detecting and fieldwalking survey carried out in 1992. Finds distributions suggest a manuring scatter, rather than the presence of settlement. 1992 evaluation in this area failed to identify archaeological features.

{16} In 1732 Horsley recognised Towcester as the Roman town of Lactodoro first mentioned in the C5th Antonine Itinerary and Ravenna List. The correct form of the place-name is accepted as Lactodurum. The first part of the name may relate to milk, or the ‘milky’ appearance of the River Tove. The second element is more secure and comes form the late Celtic –duro meaning fort in a low-lying area, thus fitting the topography of the town. However, whether the fort was pre-Roman or Roman is not known.

{22} Notes on Roman finds etc., newspaper cuttings, drawings, painting of Roman horse shoe etc., coloured plan/map of Lactodorum;

<1> 1996, The Sunday Telegraph, (checked) (Article). SNN4292.

<2> Taylor J.; Foard G.; Laughton J.; Steadman S.; Ballinger J., 2002, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Towcester, Section 1.0,2.1,2.2,3.1,3.3, 3.4 (unchecked) (Report). SNN103132.

<3> CHAPMAN A., 1998-9, Towcester, Water Lane, (unchecked) (Note). SNN104049.

<4> Sims M.; Bashford R., 2004, Radstone Technology Site, Towcester, Northamptonshire, (unchecked) (Report). SNN104970.

<5> Woodfield P., 1992, Towcester Retail Development: Historic Landscape Assessment, (checked) (Full Report). SNN46827.

<6> Woodfield C., 2001 (circa), Roman Pottery and Other Ceramic Artefacts From 163-165 Watling Street, Towcester, (unchecked) (Report). SNN106201.

<7> FOARD G.R., Towcester (Lactodorum) - Roman Town, (unchecked) (Draft). SNN70216.

<8> Brindle, T., 2008, Northamptonshire (Draft), (unchecked) (Chapter). SNN106263.

<9> Wilson D.M. (Editor), 1976, The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, (unchecked) (Book). SNN107011.

<10> Royal Commission on The Historical Monuments of England, 1982, An Inventory of The Historical Monuments in The County of Northampton, p.156/Site 3 (checked) (Series). SNN77382.

<11> Brown AE, Woodfield C, 1983, Excavations at Towcester, Northamptonshire: the Alchester Road Suburb, 18/106 (Article). SNN104558.

<12> Carlyle S., 2012, Moat Lane Regeneration, Towcester, Northamptonshire: Archaeological Evaluation, (checked) (Report). SNN109163.

<13> Hall D., 2001, The Woodland Landscapes of Southern Northamptonshire, p.33-46 (unchecked) (Article). SNN102520.

<15> Havard T., 2010, Belle Baulk, Towcester, Northamptonshire: Archaeological Evaluation, p.6-7 (checked) (Report). SNN108051.

<16> John Samuels Archaeological Consultants, 2006, An Archaeological Desk-Based Assessment of Land at 147 Watling Street, Towcester, Northamptonshire, p.8-10 (checked) (Report). SNN105760.

<17> 1975, The Archaeological Journal (132), p. 54-61/ List 63 (no 28) (MJ Green) (Journal). SNN35797.

<18> Ryland, W, Adkins, D, and Serjeantson, R M, 1902, The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Northamptonshire, p. 184 (Series). SNN100368.

<19> 1953, The Archaeological Journal (110), p. 212 (Journal). SNN59424.

<20> Brown, A.E. (Ed.), 1967, Archaeology in Northamptonshire 1966/67 (Roman), p. 19 (Article). SNN58197.

<21> GSL, 1970, Field Investigators Comments, F1 GSL 14-AUG-70 (Note). SNN112507.

<22> Dryden H.E.L., 1842-1895, Dryden Collection, DR/25/274/6,7,8-11,45,46 (Archive). SNN115.

Record last edited

Feb 3 2025 8:46PM