Benwell

Condercum, third fort on the Wall

Two miles west of Newcastle's centre, on high ground overlooking the Tyne, the Romans built Condercum — the third fort along Hadrian's Wall, garrisoned for most of its life by a cavalry regiment, the ala I Asturum. The fort itself has vanished beneath a Victorian reservoir and 1930s housing, but two remarkable fragments survive nearby: the only visible stone causeway crossing of the Wall's rear ditch, the Vallum, anywhere along its 73-mile length, and a small Roman temple.

A god found nowhere else on Earth

That temple, excavated in 1862, was dedicated to Antenociticus — a local deity unknown at any other Roman site, anywhere, making this the only shrine to him in existence. Three altars found here name officers who fulfilled vows to the god, and the beautifully carved head of his cult statue, with its Celtic torque and hairstyle grafted onto a classical face, survives in Newcastle's Great North Museum. The temple was destroyed by fire around AD 196 and never fully rebuilt.

Benwell since Rome

Like much of west Newcastle, Benwell later grew into a dense industrial and residential district in the shadow of Armstrong's Elswick Works, and today is a quiet suburb where a scheduled Roman monument sits, easy to miss, in the middle of a 1930s housing estate — managed by English Heritage and free to visit.