Daily life at Vindolanda during the 1st-2nd centuries CE

A grounded look at a Roman frontier fort community, where soldiers, families, tablets, shoes, workshops, weather, and supply shaped daily life near Hadrian's Wall.

Vindolanda was a repeatedly rebuilt Roman auxiliary fort and settlement on the Stanegate road in what is now Northumberland. Its first fort was founded around 85 CE, nearly forty years before Hadrian's Wall was built to the north. The garrison also changed: the First Cohort of Tungrians was followed by the Ninth Cohort of Batavians and then another Tungrian occupation by about 105-120; the Second Cohort of Nervians is associated with about 140 to the 160s, while the later 2nd-century garrison remains uncertain.[1]

The evidence is not evenly distributed across these years. Clay and turf used to level demolished buildings sealed oxygen-poor deposits from the earliest forts, preserving ink tablets, leather, textiles, wood, and food remains that normally decay. Those exceptional deposits belong especially to about 85-120, whereas later levels preserve organic material less consistently.[1][2] The resulting picture is unusually detailed but not a continuous record of two centuries, and the surviving documents favour military administration and officers' households over people who left no writing.

Housing and Living Spaces

Successive forts were built in timber and turf; even the fort established around 140 used those materials, and Vindolanda's first stone fort dates only to the later 2nd century, after the withdrawal from the Antonine Wall.[3] Inside stood barracks, officers' houses, headquarters, workshops, and granaries. Rank shaped space: soldiers shared barrack accommodation, while a commanding officer's residence combined family life, hospitality, stores, servants, and administration. The standing stone remains visible today are therefore a poor guide to all of the earlier living spaces described here.

Excavation north of the fort revealed two domestic buildings occupied about 105-120, one round and one rectilinear, both made with wattle and daub. Their beaten-earth floors were softened with bracken and straw; domestic pottery and hand querns lay inside. Neither contained a hearth, but a communal oven stood about 15 metres away, a pattern also seen within the fort and probably useful for limiting fire among timber buildings.[2] These finds show how cooking and maintenance could be organised beyond a single household. They do not securely identify the inhabitants' origin: building shape and a British-type quern may reflect retained, borrowed, or mixed practices rather than a simple division between “Roman” and “native”.

Food and Daily Meals

Grain was a basic army provision and could become bread, porridge, or other dishes. Tablets record grain by the modius, a Roman dry measure, as well as beans and honey; other evidence identifies apples and locally brewed beer.[4] Pork, beef, venison, poultry, and other meats occur in the evidence, while wine, olive oil, fish sauce, and pepper demonstrate supply connections beyond northern Britain.[5] These lists show availability, not a universal menu. Access varied with rank, income, season, and the success of transport, and foods recorded for officers' households should not be treated as an ordinary soldier's diet.

A business letter of about 104-120 makes the logistics unusually concrete. Octavius told Candidus that he had bought about 5,000 modii of grain in the ear, needed cash to protect his deposit, and had delayed collecting hides and a wagon from Catterick because bad roads might injure the draught animals.[6] The transaction was large and probably connected to military supply, but the editors cannot identify either man's exact status. It nevertheless shows how credit, threshing, carts, animals, and road conditions stood between a purchase and usable stores at the fort.

Work and Labor

Guard duty, patrols, training, construction, and detached service were only part of military work. A strength report for the First Cohort of Tungrians, dated about 92-97, apparently records about 752 men, roughly 456 of them away and perhaps 337 at Coria (Corbridge); of about 296 present, 31 were listed as sick, wounded, or suffering from eye inflammation. The final digits are uncertain, and the document may be an interim rather than formal annual return, but its scale shows why the unit named on paper was not the population physically inside Vindolanda on a given day.[7]

Clerks prepared such reports and supply accounts; messengers carried orders; craftspeople repaired leather, wood, metal, carts, and buildings. Stable workers cared for animals, while cooks, brewers, porters, traders, and domestic labour supported the fort and settlement. Vindolanda's leather assemblage includes offcuts, homemade shoes, and patched examples, supporting manufacture, improvisation, and extended use rather than a simple annual issue of new boots.[2] Officers' households generated additional work in provisioning, food preparation, hospitality, and correspondence, although the archive seldom names everyone who performed it.

Social Structure

Rank, legal status, literacy, gender, and military unit shaped daily experience. Officers controlled larger spaces and resources; enlisted men lived under military discipline; enslaved people had the least legal control over their movement and labour.[11] Women and children were present even though official returns centred adult male soldiers. Their shoes and other personal objects broaden the record, but size, style, or findspot cannot recover every wearer's name or status.[10] The best-known personal text, dated about 97-105, is Claudia Severa's invitation to Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of the prefect Flavius Cerialis. A practised writer produced most of the letter, while Severa added its affectionate closing in her own hand.[8] It securely documents literacy and social ties between two elite military households, not the experience of all women at the site. Other tablets preserve lists, accounts, requests, and less polished hands, yet people who dictated messages—or never appeared in writing—remain much harder to see. Archaeology likewise indicates varied cultural practices around the fort, but individual objects rarely allow an inhabitant to be labelled confidently as local British or an incomer.

Tools and Technology

Thin wooden writing tablets and ink allowed administrators, traders, and households to communicate, calculate, and retain short-lived information. Some were letters sent to the fort; others were drafts, lists, or reports discarded on floors and in ditches. Carts, pottery, knives, needles, writing tools, grain measures, and leatherworking supported transport, storage, and production.[2][6] The oxygen-poor early deposits also preserve wooden combs, utensils, and containers that are normally lost. Military paperwork was a daily technology: resource management depended on people recording what had arrived, what was owed, who was absent, and what needed replacement.

Clothing and Materials

Woollen tunics and cloaks provided insulation, supplemented by socks, leather shoes or boots, belts, and military equipment. Vindolanda preserves footwear in sizes and styles associated with men, women, and children, as well as fragments identified as tunics, cloaks, striped fabrics, sleeping mats, and a child's sock.[10] A fragmentary letter of about 104-120 mentions socks, two pairs of sandals, and two pairs of underpants; because part of the text is lost, even the editor's reading that these items had been sent is qualified.[9] Patched and homemade footwear shows that at least some items were kept in use through repair or improvised manufacture.[2] Together, documents and discarded objects show variety and repair, not one standard frontier outfit.

Sources and further reading

Vindolanda Trust, “Top Roman History FAQs” (site chronology, garrisons, preservation, and tablets).
Elizabeth M. Greene and Andrew Birley, “The Extramural Settlement at Vindolanda in the Early Second Century CE: Defining a Glocalized Environment on the Romano-British Frontier”, American Journal of Archaeology 128.1 (2024), 89-116.
Marta Alberti, “2021 Vindolanda Excavation Round-up”, Vindolanda Trust (updated 17 March 2025).
Patricia Gillespie, “Food and Drink Part 1: The Daily Grind”, Vindolanda Trust (updated 17 November 2022).
Barbara Birley, “Where did all the food needed come from?”, Vindolanda Trust (updated 10 September 2020).
Tabulae Vindolandenses 343, business letter from Octavius to Candidus, c. 104-120, Roman Inscriptions of Britain.
Tabulae Vindolandenses 154, strength report of the First Cohort of Tungrians, c. 92-97, Roman Inscriptions of Britain.
Tabulae Vindolandenses 291, Claudia Severa's birthday invitation to Sulpicia Lepidina, 97-105, Roman Inscriptions of Britain.
Tabulae Vindolandenses 346, fragmentary letter mentioning socks, sandals, and underpants, c. 104-120?, Roman Inscriptions of Britain.
Barbara Birley, “Outstanding Quality”, Vindolanda Trust (30 November 2020).
Barbara Birley, “National Significance”, Vindolanda Trust (updated 30 November 2020).