The Roman Fort at Templeborough
The fort was built in the typical Roman style and was almost square. The four main gates were North, South, East and West and the internal buildings used the normal grid pattern.
The original fort built around 54AD measured about 495 by 490 feet, and covered an area of 5½ acres. The defenses consisted of a turf rampart, built on a foundation of gravel and clay, an average 18 feet wide, with a single 18 foot wide ditch, separated from the rampart by a 13 foot wide area of level ground.
Later about 90 - 100 the fort was reduced in size by cutting down the early turf rampart and building a new fort, surrounded by a nine foot thick stone wall, backed by a clay bank and fronted by a single, 18 foot wide ditch. This covered an area about 380 by 440 feet, giving a new occupation area of about 3¾ acres.
Inside there would have been the usual facilities - Commander's house, treasury, temple, barracks, water supply, toilets (let us not forget that a toilet sponge, used long before the invention of toilet paper, had to be shared), cookhouses, stabling, granary, storerooms and animal pens. The bathhouses were situated to the north of the fort overlooking the river and were supplied by a nearby spring. There was a furnace to heat the water and the baths complex included toilets, gymnasium, sweating chamber and bathhouse.
This first stone fort was dismantled about 200AD and a second stone fort built later in the 3rd Century which may have been for the use of the local militia rather than regular troops. There was evidence of at least two burnings when some of the fort was destroyed.
I have been unable to identify the routes of the Roman roads but they would have passed through the fort on the way to the nearest other Roman fortresses at Danum (Doncaster), Chesterfield and Navio (Brough in Derbyshire). The ford over the River Don which the fort controlled is presumably somewhere near the North Gate.
The town, village or settlement 'vicus' that became Rotherham has left few traces but is believed to be about a mile to the east of the fort somewhere where the Don meets the Rother.