Luguvalium

Luguvalium (or Luguvalium Carvetiorum) was an ancient Roman city in northern Britain located within present-day Carlisle, Cumbria, and may have been the capital of the 4th-century province of Valentia. It was the northernmost city of the Roman Empire.

The Romans called the settlement Luguvalium which is now explained as a borrowed Brittonic placename reconstructed as *Luguwalion, meaning "[city] of Luguwalos", Luguwalos being a masculine Celtic given name meaning "strength of Lugus". The name apparently continued in use among Brythonic speakers in the Hen Ogledd and Wales and it was during that time that the initial element caer ("fort") was added. The place is mentioned in Welsh sources such as Nennius, who calls it Cair Ligualid, and the Book of Taliesin where it is rendered Caer Liwelyδ (Modern Welsh Caerliwelydd). (These derived from the original Brittonic name, rather than from its Latin form.) The earliest record of the place in English is as Luel (c. 1050); later medieval forms include Cardeol, Karlioli, and Cærleoil. These appear to suggest that the northern form of the name did not have the final -ydd. (Compare the River Derwent in Cumbria with Derwenydd in Wales, both from Brittonic *Derwentjū.)

The city was located on a crossroads of major Roman north-south and east-west roads and situated near to the Roman frontier, first defined by the Stanegate road and then by Hadrian's Wall, leading to Luguvalium’s development as a supply base and major military and commercial centre. It also protected a strategic location and trade route overlooking the confluence of the Caldew and Eden rivers.

Today the Roman city is located mainly under the modern city of Carlisle, but the Roman fort around which the settlement developed is mainly beneath the grounds of the later Carlisle Castle.

There are limited remains of a settlement during the British Iron Age. Before the Romans, the chief city of the Carvetii seems to have been Clifton Dykes.

Following their earlier conquest of the southern part of Britain, and Boudica's revolt, the Roman armies began to conquer the north and erected a timber fort around 72 AD at a key point south of the River Eden in a loop protected on two sides by water, on the site of the later Carlisle Castle. This fort later became the nucleus of the important Roman town of Luguvalium which grew up outside it. The fort was built by a vexillation of the legion Legio IX Hispana during the final campaign of Cerialis against the Brigantian Venutius.

The fort was refurbished in 83 using oak timbers from further afield, rather than local alder, indicating the greater Roman control of the area, and was garrisoned by a 500-strong cavalry regiment, the Ala Gallorum Sebosiana.

The 'Stanegate' frontier established from about 87 which consisted of Luguvalium and several other forts on the road east to Corbridge, was proving a more stable frontier against the Picts than those established deeper into Caledonia. By the early 2nd century, Carlisle was established as a prominent stronghold. The fort was deliberately demolished around 103 but rebuilt before 105 and retained its garrison until the Hadrianic period. One of the Vindolanda tablets records a centurio regionarius, a Stanegate officer, stationed at Luguvalium in 103.