Senhouse Museum
Maryport is fortunate in having not only the remains of an important Roman fort, but also the largest group of Roman military altar stones and inscriptions from any site in Britain and unique examples of Romano-British religious sculpture.
The collection, which was begun by the Senhouse family in the 1570s, is the oldest in the country, and is of international importance. It is housed, along with various other artefacts from the fort, in the Senhouse Roman Museum which lies immediately adjacent to the site of the fort.
Geophysical surveys in the fields to the north of the Fort, have revealed that the Roman civilian settlement was far larger than had hitherto been supposed. The Maryport site is therefore very comparable to Ruffenhofen on the Raetian Limes, where extensive magnetometry and resistivity surveys over ca. 70 acres revealed complete picture of the fort and its civilian settlement.
The Geophysical Survey Map
The map below shows the result of a geophysical survey of the fort conducted between 2000 and 2004. The fort itself can be seen in the lower left, with the site of the civilian settlement immediately to the north east. The foundations of buildings appear as light grey lines. Ditches, pits etc. appear as black lines.
The line of the road from the north east gate of the fort can be clearly seen, as can the foundations of civilian buildings along both sides of the road.
The Museum itself is marked in red on the lower left of the map.
Some particular points of interest:
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2. Probable interval tower on southwest wall 3. Northeast gate 4. Structure built adjacent to northeast gate on outside of fort 5. Courtyard well 6. Probably site of fort strong room 7. Bath house |
9. Barrack blocks 10-13. Examples of substantial buildings in civilian settlement 14. Probable site of temples 15. Location of the pit containing the 17 atlars discovered in 1870 16. Possible site of cemetary |
Maryport, magnetometry survey (Courtesy Matthias Pausch)
