Navio Roman fort

Navio Roman fort stands on a high bank above a sharp bend of the River Noe at Brough-on-Noe near Hope in Derbyshire. Its name comes from the Latin for ‘on the river’, and the fort once guarded three important roads. The earliest timber fort was built around 80 CE and measured about three acres. It was rebuilt in stone around 150 CE into a rectangle roughly 90 by 105 metres. Excavations in the 1930s by Sir Ian Richmond and J.P. Gillam traced the changing outlines of successive forts on the same site. The fort was occupied for more than two centuries and finally abandoned around 350 CE. A Roman milestone found in Buxton in 1862 shows Navio was eleven miles away and dates from the reign of Antoninus Pius. Inside the fort’s strong room archaeologists uncovered a Centurial stone and a gritstone altar, both now displayed in Buxton Museum. The Centurial stone records the rebuilding of the fort in 154 CE by the First Cohort of Aquitanians from southwest France. Today the site consists of low earthwork banks and ditches around a central platform. A few stone slabs lie exposed on the surface, marking buried remains. The vicus or civilian settlement stretched south and east of the fort, and in 2019 excavations found stone and timber buildings with pottery, coins and a ballista ball. The fort once controlled routes to lead mines, the spa town at Buxton and larger forts, making it a key link in the Peak District’s Roman network.