Rescue Excavations in the 'Vicus' of the Fort at Greta Bridge, Co. Durham, 1972-4

Abstract

The excavations at Greta Bridge (NZ o88 132) were sponsored by the then Ministry of Works as a rescue project occasioned by the re-alignment of a section of the A66 trunk road. The A66 follows the line of the Roman road from Scotch Corner to Carlisle very closely, to the extent that the Roman pavement lies immediately below the modern surface for most of its length. At Greta Bridge a slight southward deviation of the A66 seems to have occurred when the bridge carrying the route over the River Greta collapsed (FIG. 1). In the eighteenth century the new route was carried over the river on an elegant Palladian bridge — the subject of a widely reproduced watercolour by John Sell Cotman. At the outbreak of war in 1939 a Bailey bridge was built beside Cotman's to carry the weight of tanks and armoured vehicles used by the numerous army units stationed in the Catterick area. The army bridge remained in use until 1972 when the decision was made to straighten the road and to re-expose the Palladian bridge to full view. In choosing a new road line the engineers simply connected the ends of the known Roman route, thus putting the modern carriageway back to where it had been in the Roman period.