The settlement developed with successive bath houses and mansiones built to serve the official travellers as well as the growing civilian population.

The remains visible today are those of the stone bath house and mansio, built in approximately 130 CE after Letocetum ceased to have a military function and became a civilian settlement.

The site is mentioned as Etocetum in the Antonine Itinerary and presumably represented a Latinisation of a Brittonic place name reconstructed as *Lētocaiton ("Grey-wood"; cf.

[8] It is likely that a small native settlement occupied the site before the advent of the Romans, possibly as the main trading station on the boundary between two British tribes, the Corieltauvi in the East Midlands whose later tribal centre was at Ratae Corieltauvorum, and the Cornovii to the west with their original capital Uriconon (which would later give its name to the important Roman British city of Viroconium) at the hill fort on The Wrekin.

[2] In about 50 CE, a Roman vexillatio built a large timber fortress on a hilltop (near the site of the current church) at Letocetum.

[9] It was a good defensive position, but the poor farmland surrounding the fortress could not support large numbers of soldiers.

[10] During the Neronian period this initial fortress was replaced with a smaller one and Letocetum then developed into a large-scale posting station.

[17] It is thought that this building was built during the military period as the surviving masonry is of high quality with finely dressed stone and a wall some 1.2 metres (3.9 ft) thick.

[17] Letocetum ceased to be used by the military after about 130 CE, probably leaving the town under the authority of the civitas of the Cornovii with its capital at Viroconium Cornoviorum.

[2] Through the entrance hall was a colonnaded atrium or courtyard with a plastered floor, the central area probably being open to the sky and perhaps containing a herbaceous garden.

[2] The one on the west contained washing facilities and a gutter leading to a soak-away in the central part of the building, the room to the east may possibly have been a guardroom.

The largest room in the mansio lay in the north-east corner, the chamber was heated by a channelled hypocaust system added some time after the building was first completed.

[2] From the street, a paved area led into a colonnade fronting the building on the east and continuing round the north side.

At the far north end of the bath complex was the stoke-room or praefurnium, which contained the wood-fired furnaces of the hypocaust system.

[2] This underfloor heating system was present in the tepidarium, the caldarium and the laconicum where the floors were supported on pillars of tiles or pilae.

[2] The hot combustion gases from the stoke-room furnaces circulated under the floor between these pillars and were drawn up around the sides of the building through box tiles embedded in the walls, to escape finally through vents in the barrel-vaulted roof.

[20] The late defences were built in about 300 CE astride Watling Street, approximately 150 metres (490 ft) east of the mansio site.

On the western side a section of wall was found still standing 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) high above shallow foundations but below the ploughed soil.

[21] It is thought that the construction of these defences was related to a general uprising of the Welsh tribes, the Ordovices and Silures, that occurred at this time.

The revolt was soon quelled, but, to guard against further disruptions, a series of strongholds including Letocetum, Pennocrucium, and Uxacona were established along the length of Watling Street.

[23] The settlement must have been significant for some time; it is listed in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, and Reno writes "Wall, appearing as Cair Luitcoyt, and undoubtedly correctly ascribed, appears rather incongruously among such major towns and military depots as York, London, Chester, Wroxeter and Caerleon but nevertheless must have been a place of important consequence because of its inclusion as a strategic city.