The Roman Fort at Segedunum

I tagged this post "history" and "homeschool" because our trip to the Roman fort at Segedunum yesterday was on the first day of what I'm calling our Summer School Program (more about that in another post).

Just outside of Newcastle upon Tyne, the fort is right alongside the River Tyne. Some parts of the ruins are actually underneath a busy highway and a nearby apartment complex. The name of the district/village where the ruins are located is called Wallsend. Why? Because that's where Hadrian's Wall (which we saw a few weeks ago) joins up with the walls of the fort. The wall's end.

All that's left of the buildings now. Just outlines on the ground, really.

Merrit, Ollie, and a friend inside the ruins of the building that used to
be the fort's armory.

From the top of the nine-story observation tower, you can see the outlines
of where the fort's various buildings used to stand. On the TV screen, an
animation shows a time-lapse representation of the land stretching out
below...grasslands to Roman fort to fort in ruins to farmland to coal colliery
to shipyard to present-day archaeological site and museum. Very cool. 

The boys duel like gladiators in the gift shop.

Merrit works at building an arch with oversized foam bricks.

What the latrine in the barracks' bath house would have looked like.

Inside the bath house, which has been reconstructed based on the ruins and
what archaeologists know about how the Romans lived and used bath houses.
This was the "warm bath room" in the barrack's bath house, where a fountain like
this one would have spouted warm water for washing the face and body.