Roman Legion XX

I have always had pretty tanned skin, dark hair, and deep brown eyes and frequently I receive comments suggesting I look Italian.  Even when I was younger, my school friends would cheekily ask whether I was adopted or not, because I appeared to be 'from another country.'  It was (and still is) at times quite frustrating.  Added to this, at school I was called many an impolite (an understatement) name over the years and this even carried on after I’d finished school when I started work.  I have been asked on more occasions than I can remember the question “where do you come from?”  To me it was an odd thing to ask, especially when I’d grown up in Flintshire and knew nowhere else.  My dad was of a similar complexion and told me he’d been put through the same sort of questions both as a child and an adult.  I can remember being punched and kicked in Chester  as a teenager for just looking different, so it’s no wonder that as an adult I started to investigate my ancestry to see exactly where I came from.

As I mentioned yesterday, when my DNA results came back, it even surprised me to see I was 100% from these isles, with over 3/4 from Wales, the rest from the North-West of England and a tiny percentage (2%) being Irish.  So I’m for sure a Celt but part of me suspects, that when the Romans were in these parts, nearly 2000 years ago there could be a part of me, not showing up in my DNA , which is related to those times, after all they were in this area for hundreds of years. For sure my ancient Welsh ancestors would have come into contact with the Romans in this area, especially those of Roman Legion XX.  Of course I’ll never know, but it’s an exciting thought to think an ancestor of mine might have  had some connection with the twentieth Victorious Valeria Legion stationed at Deva Victrix (Chester), in the province of Britannia.

The map I showed yesterday detailed the Roman Empire in AD 125 (under Emperor Hadrian) and indicated that Legion XX Valeria Victrix were where the Deceangli tribe were. The Legion were stationed at Deva  from AD 88 until at least the late 3rd century.

The 'Twentieth' were among the legions involved in the construction of Hadrian's Wall, and the discovery of stone altars commemorating their work in Caledonia suggests that they had some role in building the Antonine Wall too. 

The Legion would have been in Chester at the time Roman Emperor Septimus Severus conducted several successful campaigns to conquer rebellious tribes in Britannia, before he died in York in the year 211.

One historical matter almost never discussed by historians and writers of Roman History isThe Wall of Severus.  This wall was constructed to keep us Welsh barbarians under control and if you read the 4th century ‘Scriptores Historia Augustae,’  there is mention of a ‘third wall and rampart’ in Britain, which ran for 132 miles from the Severn Estuary to the River Dee.  Detailed research by the historians Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd in their book The Keys to Avalon (ISBN: 1-86204-735-9) has shown this to be precisely what historians generally now consider to be Offa’s Dyke, but this is for sure,  likely the place the later King Offa (757-796) of Mercia did build his dyke, but seemingly he repaired and followed the line of the earlier Wall of Severus. It is such a fascinating bit of unknown history which I made sure I gave some recognition to in my book 'Excalibur Reborn.'

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