Balkerne Gate
Piercing the east side of the old Roman town walls of Camulodunum is the Balkerne Gate, the oldest surviving Roman gateway in Britain and the main entrance into the Roman town. One side of the gate opening is now filled by the aptly-named Hole in the Wall pub, but in Roman times the entire opening was spanned by a pair of large arched openings with a smaller passage for foot traffic on either side. To the south of the main gateway passage is a smaller guardroom accessed down a short step. We think there was once a triumphal arch here, built to honour the Emperor Claudius and built between 50-60AD. When the wall was built it simply incorporated the existing archway into the wall structure. It survived because it was infilled later in the Roman period, when the main gateway was moved further south, to the Head Gate (at the junction of Headgate and Southway). Just south of Southway, by the police station, are the foundations of the oldest known Romano-Christian church, built beside a graveyard just outside the town walls.


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