Burgh Castle Roman Site

Burgh Castle Roman Site
Norfolk, England
A turret on the eastern wall
Burgh Castle Roman Site
Coordinates	52°34′57″N 1°39′05″E / 52.5826°N 1.6515°E / 52.5826; 1.6515
Grid reference	grid reference TG474045
Type	Rectangular Roman Shore fort later Norman motte and bailey fort
Site information
Owner	Norfolk Archaeological Trust and English Heritage
Open to the public	Yes
Condition	Roman fort: fair, surviving walls on 3 sides to 4.6 m (15 ft) high Norman fort: no remains
Site history
Materials	Flint and some brick/tile

Burgh Castle is the site of one of several Roman shore forts constructed around the 3rd century AD, to hold cavalry as a defence against Saxon raids up the rivers of the east and south coasts of southern Britain; and is located on the summit of ground sloping steeply towards the estuary of the River Waveney, in the civil parish of Burgh Castle, in Norfolk. This fort was possibly known as Gariannonum, although the single record that describes it as such may also mean the Roman site at Caister-on-Sea. Between the mid-7th and 9th centuries the site was possibly occupied by a monastic settlement, and in the 11th and 12th centuries a Norman motte and bailey castle existed on the site.

In Roman times, possibly known as Gariannonum, name that appears in a single source; the Notitia Dignitatum, a Roman Army “order of battle” from about AD 400. The identification was once thought secure, but is now thought doubtful by specialists.

Burgh, is derived from the same Old English language word burh (whose dative singular and nominative/accusative plural form byrig sometimes underlies modern place-names, and which had dialectal variants including ; it was also sometimes confused with beorh, beorg, 'mound, hill', on which see Hall 2001, 69-70). The Old English word was originally used for a fortified town or proto-castle, as in Burgh Castle, and was related to the verb beorgan (cf. Dutch and German bergen), meaning "to keep, save, make secure". In German means castle or fortress, though so many towns grew up around castles that it almost came to mean city, and is incorporated into many placenames, such as Hamburg, Flensburg and Strasbourg.