Dr. Francis McIntosh

Maybe your family is there and you want to go and see them.

Maybe you're trying to make a bit extra money and you're also trading and you've got shares in one of the pottery shops in this town.

And so that's what you're doing elsewhere.

You could go hunting.

There's a lovely altar at Bird Oswald that's been dedicated by the Venatoris of Banner.

So Banner is a Roman name.

Hunting would be a way to supplement your food.

There's not one so far.

The closest is something near Bird Oswald that people are desperate to say is, but Tony Wilmot, who's the expert, is not convinced.

But equally, it's a circular depression that could well have been used for people to sit around and be entertained by the plays or gladiators or things like that.

One of the recent finds that I've been working on is a little knife handle in the shape of a gladiator that was found in the River Tyne at Corbridge.

So gladiators are across the world and they're a form of entertainment.

Just because we haven't found...

a really nice, I'm afraid to say the one at Richborough is fantastic, doesn't mean there's not temporary structures that then leave no footprint.

Maybe there's a travelling, I don't know, show of either actors or gladiators or other things and we have pop-up shows now, don't we, and they leave no physical trace afterwards.

Well, baths are not normally inside the fort.

And if every gate is guarded... These are the intricacies we don't know.

Every gate presumably was guarded.

And you may be...

need to pass to get out maybe you just need the password particularly if you're going to the bathhouse but no because the bathhouse is not something you would need in a siege so if you think about what's in the fort but you know and the bathhouse is not it's not a luxury that is an essential an essential it is you know it's part of Roman life