The influence of the Romans brought about many changes in lifestyle.

Prior to the Roman

occupation the Celtic tribes of Britain had focused their daily life around the hillforts. These
hillforts were simple defended camps on higher ground, in which the chieftain or king of the local
tribe would live along with many of his animals, plus bodyguards, slaves and some members of his
tribe. Within these camps were a number of simple roundhouses in which separate families lived.
Other members of the tribe would live outside the hillforts, in small villages or isolated farmhouses.
After the Roman invasion, "towns" and villages began to spring up on lower ground, often close to
a river. These towns were simple in design with a main street running through the centre, and shops,
houses and public buildings built alongside.

The houses of the Roman period were very different to the simple thatched roundhouses of the Iron
Age. Roman houses were normally rectangular and built of a timber frame with wattle and daub
inserts. They were often of two storeys and the roofs would be tiled. Inside the house there would
be a cement floor, and sometimes highly-decorated tessellated mosaic pavements with geometrical
designs. Some of the larger houses were equipped with under-floor heating (hypocausts), which
consisted of a floor raised on brick pillars and a furnace built under the floor to allow heat to spread
throughout the space between the ground and the raised floor. A system of flues would carry the
heat from the basement to other parts of the building. In Herefordshire, we have evidence of mosaic
floors and hypocaust systems from the Roman town at Kenchester.

Public buildings were also a feature of Roman towns. In Herefordshire we do not have much
evidence of public buildings, but Kenchester does appear to have had a bath complex. The baths
were an important part of Roman daily life, as men would go there to socialise, exercise and relax.
Most baths consisted of three baths at different temperatures: the frigidarium (cold room);
thetepidarium (warm room); and the caldarium (hot room). The rooms were heated by the
hypocaust system explained above. The men would work their way around these three rooms,
taking a dip in each to invigorate the mind and body. Rich men would spend whole days at the
baths, being waited on by their servants, playing games and socialising. There would often be
people on hand to give massages and to cleanse the client's body by rubbing in olive oil and then
scraping it off with an instrument like a blunt knife, known as a strigil. In ancient Rome women
were also permitted to use the baths, but had their own bath day separate from the men so that the
two would never mix. Evidence from sites such as Caerleon in Monmouthshire suggests that at least
some women in Roman Britain also used the public baths.

The richer members of Romano-British society, and those men who worked for the Romans, began
to wear the Roman toga style of clothing. This consisted of a loose wrap-around piece of cloth.
Many men also shaved and wore their hair short, like Romans. The poorer men of Roman Britain
continued to wear the older Celtic style of clothes, consisting of a woollen tunic and trousers.

The greatest influence of the Romans was seen in trade and industry. Up until this time the Iron Age
people had produced enough crops to feed themselves, and markets had been small, local affairs
with not much cross-country trading. The influx of the Roman army meant that there was now an
increased and permanent demand for crops, meat, leather and horses, all of which had to be
provided by the local community. The larger the industry became, with new roads, public buildings
and houses, the more need there was for engineers, carpenters and masons and the greater the need
for raw materials. The Iron Age community began to learn new skills in order to create a romanised
Britain. The system by which the local people provided the corn for soldiers was known as Tribute
Tax. This would have caused an increase in the clearing of land for arable cultivation and resulted
in the use of more rotary querns and corn-drying ovens.

Continental products were also being brought into the country. High-quality pottery and tableware
was a feature of ordinary life for the Romans, and soon Britain was creating a demand for similar
goods. One typical and easily-recognisable style of Roman pottery is known as Samian ware. This
was red glazed pottery that was highly decorated with scenes depicting scenes of hunting and
fishing. It was not an everyday kind of pottery and was only used at important banquets, due to the
expense and time spent creating it. Samian ware was made in Roman Gaul (modern France), and
extensive study of its clays and decoration has led to the identification of individual workshops that
produced it. Wine was also being imported from Italy and other parts of the empire as Britain was
being opened up to the world beyond her shores.

The Romans are famous for their road building, and they were quick to set up a network across the
country enabling troops to travel quickly from A to B - usually in as straight a line as possible.
Roman surveyors would plot a route between two points using a groma, four weighted strings
hanging from a cross on a pole. The path of the road would then be cleared and a route cut into the
ground. Foundations of chalk or gravel would be laid, and on top a layer of paving stones or cobbles
would have completed the road surface. To prevent the build-up of surface water the Romans often
dug drainage channels on either side of the road to carry the water away. Roman roads also had
quite a pronounced camber (the curve of the road surface) to encourage the water to run off into the
drains.

The Roman occupation brought about many changes to life in Britain, but these developments
mainly affected the upper classes - those who could afford to build heated villas and visit the baths.
For the ordinary farmer of Iron Age Herefordshire, the Roman invasion did not affect his day to day
living to any great extent, and for some time he continued to wear his Celtic woollen clothes, live in
his thatched roundhouse and feed his family on the food that he himself had grown.

Before the Romans came, very few people could read or write in Britain. Instead, information was usually
passed from person to person by word of mouth.

The Romans wrote down their history, their literature and their laws. Their language was called Latin, and it
wasn’t long before some people in Britain started to use it too. However, it only really caught on in the new
Roman towns – most people living in the countryside stuck to their old Celtic language.

We’ve still got lots of words and phrases today that come from Latin. Words like ‘exit’, which means ‘he or
she goes out’, and ‘pedestrian’, which means ‘going on foot’.

Our coins are based on a Roman design and some of the lettering is in Latin. Written around the edge of
some £1 coins is the phrase ‘decus et tutamen’ which means ‘glory and protection’.