Derventio Brigantum

Derventio Brigantum was a Roman fort and settlement beneath the modern town of Malton in North Yorkshire. It stood beside the River Derwent, 18 miles north-east of Eboracum. The fort first appears in the Antonine Itinerary of the late second century under the name Derventio Brigantium. By the fourth or fifth century it was listed in the Notitia Dignitatum as Deruentione. The Ala Gallorum Picentiana, a mounted cavalry unit, once occupied the fort. A Hamian archers unit called the Numerus Syrorum Saggitariorum also served there. Excavations in the 1930s by Philip Corder and John Kirk uncovered defences and interior buildings. Further work between 1949 and 1952 revealed a road, several buildings and a mosaic in the civilian settlement. Leslie Peter Wenham’s 1970 dig identified timber and stone structures from the Trajanic, Severan, Constantian and Theodosian periods. A turf rampart 16 ft wide backed a ditch 6 ft wide and 3½ ft deep beneath later vicus buildings. The earliest secure construction dates to the AD 70s under Agricola. The original earthworks remain visible in Orchard Fields in the centre of Malton. Collections from the site form part of the Malton Museum and the Yorkshire Museum. A single inscription to Mars Rigus shows Roman religious presence. Nearby Malton Castle, built in the eleventh century, later gave way to a mansion destroyed in the seventeenth century. The area’s Roman road network linked the fort to the east coast and larger settlements.