Cragside Primary School: Year 4 trip to Vindolanda

Our two Year 4 classes had an amazing trip visiting Vindolanda. We spent the morning at the Vindolanda site, which is the most excavated fort on Hadrian’s Wall. We had the opportunity to see live, archaeological excavations in situ at the fort and ask some of the volunteer archaeologists questions. The children were amazed to hold some recently found Roman pottery, especially when they were told that they were the third person to hold it in nearly 2000 years!

We toured the remains of the vicus, where the children were intrigued to see the remains of the bathhouse, tavern and temple. We then investigated the site of the fort. Our classes were particularly amazed at the size of the Commanding Officer’s house, with its private courtyard and hypocaust system.  At the Vindolanda Museum, the children were amazed by the large array of shoes and many finds from the site itself. We completed an ‘eye-spy’ hunt where they had to find specific items in the museum and name them. The children loved the display of Roman coins, jewellery and the replica chariots.

After lunch, after climbing the replica wall and forts, we embarked on a short journey, which followed the line of Hadrian’s Wall through the scenic Northumbrian countryside, from Vindolanda to the Roman Army Museum where we enjoyed seeing full scale replicas of centurians and cavalry soldiers. We watched ‘the edge of the Empire’ which is an amazing short film depicting what life would have been like on the site. We even visited a Roman classroom, where a virtual Roman teacher taught us about the rise of the Roman Empire, Roman education and even a little bit of Latin!

This trip has inspired us to write our own leaflets about visiting Vindolanda.