LEAD BULLETS
A selection of Roman sling shot bullets excavated at various points during 20th century investigations
View of the fields next to the Ambleside Roman fort
A selection of Roman sling shot bullets excavated at various points during 20th century investigations
As you make your way behind the Roman fort, you are walking through a site that once came under attack. Scattered outside the fort where you are standing, archaeologists have found lead bullets, known as glandes, small but deadly projectiles used in Roman slingshots. Their wide distribution throughout this landscape tells a dramatic tale of battle at Ambleside; the Roman auxiliary soldiers fought external enemies at least once right here. Many of the bullets are irregular in shape, quickly produced to keep up with the imminent threat of attack. Could this have been the very battle in which Roman auxiliary Flavius Romanus lost his life? His tombstone, the final stop on the trail, reads of his fate: “killed in the fort by the enemy”.
Ambleside is an unusual case of direct evidence of a Roman fort being attacked and holds the third-largest number of these slingshot bullets in Britain. But who were the attackers? The answer remains unclear, but the bullets and the tombstone tell us about possible armed resistance of local communities unhappy with the Roman army’s presence. The auxiliaries stationed here were likely not Roman citizens, but outsiders themselves in the Roman army, looking to establish a new local identity and, in the process, clashing with the existing native groups.
Slings were a commonly used weapon during Iron Age Britain and Republican Rome, valued for their effectiveness and long range. However, the use of slingers fell out of practice in Roman Britain. So why were sling bullets being used here in Ambleside? An answer to this may be revealed in recent chemical analysis on The Armitt’s collection. The bullets and lead slag (the waste left behind by metalworkers) are being traced to identify if they were being made from local sources of galena (raw lead). There are suggestions that the lead may have originated from Greenside Mine in Glenridding, which lies 10 miles north of Ambleside. This points to the possibility that Roman defenders could have been manufacturing these weapons on site, using whatever local materials in a moment of urgent need to protect the fort, which turned out to be lead.
Keep going along the path. As you reach the end, you will come to a gate. Once through the gate, you should be standing in Borrans Field, the site of Ambleside Roman Fort, and next to a sign about the natural environment of the river. This beautiful view of the river and Windermere is the next stop on the route. The walking time is approximately two-three minutes.