The discovery of a Roman fort at Cripplegate, City of London: Excavations by W F Grimes 1947-68

When Grimes received a CBE for the discovery of the Temple of Mithras, he remarked that he was proud but wished that it had been in recognition of his work at Cripplegate – the discovery of the Mithraeum was ‘a fluke’. His initial objective at Cripplegate was to understand the dating sequence of the city’s defences. He soon discovered that the outline of the walls there represented the location of a 2nd-century fort which had gone out of use by the early 3rd century. Grimes pieced together over a 15-year period the outline and main sequence of the Cripplegate fort – his detailed research, published here, significantly enhanced our understanding of the Roman city of Londinium.