Deva Victrix - Legionary Baths

Legionary Baths

Deva Victrix had a large legionary bath complex (thermae) for the soldiers to maintain good hygiene and to use for leisure time. The baths were sited near the south gate and measured 82.6 metres (271 ft) by 85.5 metres (281 ft). They were completed towards the end of Vespasian's reign. The complex was constructed from concrete and faced with stone. The walls were 1.2 metres (3.9 ft) thick and the barrel-vaulted buildings rose as high as 16.1 metres (53 ft).

The bath complex featured an entrance room (vestibulum), an exercise hall (basilica thermarum), a sweating room (sudatorium), a cold room with a cold pool (frigidarium), a warm room (tepidarium), and a hot room with a hot plunge bath (caldarium). An unsheltered exercise yard (palaestra) also formed part of the complex. The baths had mosaic floors and were heated by a hypocaust under-floor system connected to three furnaces. Such furnaces required several metric tons of wood each day.

The baths would have been in operation 24 hours a day, using an estimated 850,000 litres (190,000 imp gal) of water each day. The water was supplied from the springs in Boughton through underground lead pipes linked to the main aqueduct near the east gate. The water was then held in large tanks with concrete foundations, before being fed through the complex.

A large area of the baths was destroyed by building works in 1863 and during the construction of the Grosvenor Shopping Mall in 1963. Sandstone columns from the exercise hall of the baths, measuring 0.75 metres (2.5 ft) in diameter, can be viewed in the "Roman Gardens" off Pepper Street; the columns would originally have stood 5.9 metres (19 ft) high. A section of hypocaust remains in situ and is on display in the cellar of 39 Bridge Street.