At Cilurnum these were situated to the north of the Principia, and important remains are to be seen in the north-eastern section of the fort area.
There was probably accommodation for six companies of one hundred men, ten men in a room. The Asturians who formed the garrison came from a mountainous district in the north of Spain, where it is quite as cold as the valley of the North Tyne. The hardy mountain ponies they brought with them were known as Asturco by the Romans. The stables have not been identified. The barrack-rooms had a covered way or verandah running in front, with a series of columns, some of whose bases remain. A massive stone gutter runs down the middle of the street between the barracks. They probably had little pent-house roofs. When the rooms were excavated they were full of pottery, bones, oyster-shells, and rubbish of all kinds, giving a very bad impression of the standard of refinement and comfort of the last occupiers.
To the east of the Principia is what is most probably the residence of the commandant, with private baths, as well as dwelling-rooms, elaborately heated by means of hypocausts. The building was finely designed and finished. A beautiful moulding runs round the base, and also round the buttress.
The site of the furnace is close to a large yew-tree; it is semi-circular, and the fuel for it was wood. The hot gases and smoke were drawn under the floors of the rooms, which were supported on hypocaustal pillars of burnt clay tiles mortared together, or of stones such as are used in the walls. Brick tiles were used nearest the furnace, because the heat would have cracked the stone. Fragments of circular columns are also used, but these are diverted from their original purpose. The floors of the rooms were of double slabs of stones, cemented together, so as to prevent the smoke from coming up through the floors.
The tiles were roughened with a tool usually, to give a grip to the mortar. Accidental marks, made on them when wet, are often seen: the footprints of dogs, dents from the nails of a sandal, thumb-marks, showing the lines of the skin, and the mark of a man's bare foot, showing the great toe.
The baths had been cemented all over with pink cement, probably made with brick-dust. The rooms were plastered inside, and the plaster decorated with deep red, terre-verte and yellow ochre. Evidently they had been replastered sometimes over the paint, and coloured again on the top, just as we put on successive wall-papers.
The level of the floors had been raised nearly 3 feet since the building was first made.
Over its ruined walls there grows the pretty little purple "Erinus Alpinus," which is said by some to have made a mysterious appearance only since the excavations were begun. Did it spring from seed which had long lain dormant, having been originally brought from Spain by one of the Asturians who garrisoned this fort?
It is an attractive legend, and I would like to believe it true; but the hard cold fact is that somebody remembers its having been deliberately planted on the ruins after the excavations were made!
A very interesting point which must not be missed is the way in which the stone thresholds of the gateways have been worn by the chariot-wheels passing over them. It must have been a dreadful jolt for the occupants to cross these high thresholds when they were new, but Roman soldiers were of course above minding little things like that! The ruts are just over 4 feet 6½ inches apart, exactly the distance of the wheel-marks we see in the streets of Pompeii.