Capital: VIROCONIVM CORNOVIORVM
Location: Wroxeter, Shropshire
Extent: Shrops. mainly, with parts of Staffs., Ches., Clwyd & E. Powys
Notes: No tribal centre prior to Roman times. Tribe was remarkably aceramic, leading a mainly pastoral life.
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Tribe: Cornovii
Capital: VIROCONIVM CORNOVIORVM Location: Wroxeter, Shropshire Extent: Shrops. mainly, with parts of Staffs., Ches., Clwyd & E. Powys Notes: No tribal centre prior to Roman times. Tribe was remarkably aceramic, leading a mainly pastoral life. |
VIROCONIVM CORNOVIORVM (Wroxeter, Shropshire), the fourth largest town in Roman Britain, occupied the same site as the former fortress of Legio XIV Gemina Martia Victrix, the Fourteenth 'Twin' Legion, Martial and Victorious. It is probably named from the same source as the Wrekin hillfort, which overlooks the site from the east.
DEVA VICTRIX (Chester, Cheshire), also known as Castra Legionis, 'The Legionary Fortress' of Legio XX Valeria Victrix, the Twentieth Valiant and Victorius Legion. One of only two poleis attributed to the Cornovii by Ptolemy; the other being the cantonal capital Viroconium.
Much of Shropshire, especially the SW is hill country, the Northern area is plain, covered by glacial drift of sand, gravel and boulder clay, in places covering the underlying bedrock to a depth of 45 metres. Broken by red sandstone ridges running north-east to south-west. The north-west part of the county is covered by meres and pools, the residues of lakes and great bogs which were very attractive to native peoples of mid-late bronze-age, where they could retreat from the powerful iron-age folk pressing steadily from the south. Fish and wildfowl were in plenty. Folk used dug-out canoes, net sinkers and bone harpoons. The large areas of sand and gravel alluvial deposits would have been covered by a light scrub, easily cleared for cultivation, and for this reason, the area has been widely settled since the stone-age. There exist a few possible bronze-smelting sites indigenous to the area, working for settled populace.
The River Severn rises in the central massiv of Wales, flowing first north-east, the river turns east before Shrewsbury, then south-east until Ironbridge where it turns sharply southwards. It was a main communication route and a source of food such as salmon, and also provided strategic easy access into north Wales. The Severn is wide enough to require and provide key crossing places where fords or ferries could be maintained. Worcester was one such important crossing point, Bewdley where the Clun-Clee ridgeway crosses the river was another, and there was also a crossing at Buildwas, giving a route south from the Wrekin via the Wenlock Edge ridgeway. In the area of modern Shrewsbury, marshes made crossing very difficult, but another possible pre-Roman route exists leading from the north, crossing the Isle of Coton and fording the river near the site of the later castle (Shrewsbury).
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| The Palaestra at Wroxeter |
The Cornovii had many Hillforts, one of the largest and most populous being on the Wrekin in Shropshire, overlooking the eventual site of the Romano-British tribal capital. The eventual size of Viroconium is inconsistent with the estimated size of the population. Extrapolated from the number of known pre-Roman settlements the area, the archaeological evidence suggests a much more sparsely populated region. estimated population is much less than is suggested. It is possible therefore, that the bulk of the population lived in dwellings such as timber cabins without stone foundations, which are very difficult to find using current archaeological methods.
The tribe had no coinage and no distinctive metalwork, with what little pottery they had being imported from the Malvern hills region. There are some sites however, where local potteries have been found, such as the Berth and Breidden hillforts, and possibly Credenhill in the west. The other significant cultural detail is the manner of defences and gateways in hillforts on both sides of the Severn, and linked to those of the Wye valley in the south.
| The Distribution of Hillforts in the Cornovian Canton | |
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The dotted lines in the diagram denote the borders between the Celtic tribes in the Severn Valley area, based on hillfort construction methods, and to a lesser extent, similarities in culture based on recovered artefacts. |
| Map adapted from Graham Webster's The Cornovii (Fig.4, pp.8). | |
It has been suggested that the lack of metal and fine pottery finds is indicative that the Cornovii were not the most wealthy of Celtic peoples. They had a mostly pastoral economy, tho' some cultivation of cereal crops occurred in the river valleys. These lowland areas were populated by peasants who paid tribute to local lords in thier lofty citadels, in cattle and in grain.
On the southern side of the Berwyn range, there is a hillfort at Craig Rhiwarth deep in the Tanat valley at the extreme northern tip of Powys. This fort marks the boundary between the Cornovii and their less-refined neighbours the Ordovices. This extreme outpost of the Cornovii was possibly founded by a renegade prince and his retinue, who travelled westwards along this tributary of the Sabrina from their Cornovian homelands in Shropshire. Possibly captured from the Ordovices in the first instance, the location, on a southern-jutting spur of the Berwyns, in a narrow tributary valley of the Sabrina, would have offered very little in the way of arable land, and the principle economic product may have been sheep, thus bearing-out the overall pastoral qualities of Cornovian life.
The general aspect of the hillfort at Craig Rhiwarth fits in quite well with the description outlined by Tacitus as the last stand of Caratacus and his forces in Wales in AD50.
| Viroco | The name of this Cornovian noble is derived purely from the notion that the later tribal capital of the Cornovii was originally named 'Viroconon' or 'Viroco's town', possibly after the leader of the Cornovian resistance to the Roman advance, who died with his followers during the storming of the Wrekin Hillfort, and that the original Celtic name for the settlement was later Romanised to Viroconium [Cornoviorum], i.e. "The town of Viroco [of the Cornovii]". |
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Of particular interest is the tombstone of a woman named Vedica, a member of the Cornovii tribe who was buried at Ilkley in Yorkshire (RIB 639).
The following article was taken from Iron Age Communities in Britain by Barry Cunliffe, pages 51 & 52.
"The Broadward group, named after a Herefordshire hoard, can be defined in terms of an assemblage of weapons which includes swords of Ewart Park type, chapes and spearheads, among which a barbed variety is characteristic. The contrast between the predominantly domestic character of south-east Welsh hoards and the military nature of the Broadward hoards may possibly reflect a difference in social structure, but the total absence of occupation sites which can be definitely be assigned to the period prevents any consideration of settlement pattern or economy. The area covered by the group extends from Pembrokeshire through central Wales into Cheshire and from here into the Welsh border-land, while some of the diagnostic weapons are found even further afield. The territory is well suited to a pastoral economy which would be consistent with a warlike society. The absence of pottery is another feature suggestive of pastoralism, since under such living conditions pottery would tend to break easily and would be better replaced by leather, wooden or metal containers. Indeed, there is clear evidence from the later forts in the Welsh borderland that the communities remained largely aceramic into the 4th or 3rd centuries BC."
