Exploring Wroxeter Roman City

As a family, we love to explore all the fantastic ruins, castles and historical sites that are abundant in the UK. My youngest is especially fascinated with Romans as the moment so when we realised there were Roman Ruins only about 25mins away from where we were staying on our recent trip to Ironbridge we knew we had to visit.

Wroxeter Roman City was once the fourth largest city in Roman Britain and has an impressive array of ruins, artefacts and objects to view as you first enter a small indoor museum which helps explain more about Wroxeter and what daily Roman life would have looked like and helps give context to Wroxeters past. You then wander outdoors around the bathhouse ruins, which was much bigger than I imagined. The grounds are also home to the iconic Old Work which is a 7-meter high basilica wall and the largest piece of the free-standing Roman wall in the country and nearly 2000yrs old at that!

Old Work - the largest freestanding Roman Wall in the UK

What makes Wroxeter really interesting is the full-sized reconstructed Roman Town House, built using only the tools and materials available to the Romans, making it as authentic as possible. Walking through the house allows you to really grasp what life was like and the house includes a dinning-room, bedrooms, bath-suite and replica Roman furniture. The house also had some pretty fantastic views, in fact, I wouldn't mind living in a house like that today!

Wroxeter Roman City is an English Heritage property so admission charges do apply, we paid £18.70 for a family pass and while that is a bit of a chunk we felt it was worth it, especially as we spent a good 2hrs exploring the site and we all found both fun and educational. You also have an audio tour included in that and you can stay for as long as you want. Places like this allow children to get up close to Roman History without the expense of a trip to Rome. There are toilets on-site as well as a small gift shop but no cafe, although there are picnic benches so do bring some light refreshments if your planning to stay an hour or more.

*We paid in full for our entry