Huddersfield in Roman Times
By Ian A. Richmond
SOCIAL CONDITIONS, A.D. 80-125.
LIFE IN THE ROMAN FORTS: THE CONDITION OF THE NATIVES :
THE ROMAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THEM
After considering life within the forts it is natural to
ask to what level civilisation attained in the Huddersfield
District outside them. Roman treatment of natives in newly-conquered
territory varied. It resistance was obstinate or behaviour
treacherous a whole countryside might be laid waste mercilessly,
and its people killed, enslaved or transported. Tacitus
alludes twice to such treatment of British natives; the
Ordovices of North Wales were subdued, “for almost
the whole tribe was wiped out”; and the sentiment
that “the Romans made a wilderness and call it peace”
presumably was not put by him without reason into the mouth
of a particularly obstinate British chief. But there were
the extreme cases. On the other hand a great tribal centre
might be ruined, while the smaller native villages and hill-forts
survived. The whole of North Wales is crowded with such
examples.
Ring, Bracelet and Beads from the Fort at
Slack
In the Huddersfield district there are signs that the natives
were leniently treated. It would be gratifying to find in
the forts at Castleshaw and Slack indications of this similar
to those from the fort at Newstead, near Melrose, where
many products of native workmanship were found, such as
small brooches, linch-pins, or horse-trappings. And in fact
Slack has yielded an enamelled harness-mounting which is
of British manufacture, while both Castleshaw and Slack
have produced those blue melon-shaped beads, which seem
to have come from the east of the Roman world, and signify
readiness to barter on the soldiers’ side at least.
Castleshaw and Slack were dismantled and not destroyed;
consequently their inhabitants took away all that was broken
or lost. Newstead, on the other hand, was excavated hurriedly,
and many objects, hidden but never reclaimed by their owners,
provide striking proof of a health and peace-prompting between
Roman and Briton.
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