Petuaria

The adjacent civitas (civil town), ferry-crossing and (attested) port which grew over and replaced the fort survived until about 370, and was probably the capital of the Celtic tribe called the Parisi.

Archaeological excavations of the site of Petuaria were carried out in the 1930s (one of the archaeologists was Mary Kitson Clark),[2] and between 1958 and 1962, with occasional examinations of isolated areas since.

Recording the gift of a proscenium stage to the civic settlement at Petuaria by a man called Marcus Ulpius Januarius, it has been dated to the reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius and around 140 A.D.[3] His inscription was found re-used in the later stonework defences of Petuaria and gives a clear illustration of the standard of civic works and also civil and literary society which at one time existed in or around Roman Brough, at a tiny town whose modern magistrates court was only recently closed in the late 1990s, so ending nearly two thousand years of locally recorded justice unprecedented anywhere else in the British Isles [citation needed].

Roman Petuaria seems a genuine precursor to the strategic importance now held by the modern port city of Kingston upon Hull, founded in the Middle Ages.

Eight major rivers can be accessed from the North Sea through the estuary: the Ouse, Hull, Derwent, Wharfe, Aire, Don, Trent and Ancholme.

The nearby villa at Brantingham, just outside Brough, was first discovered in 1941 and would have been closely associated with the Roman town until it burnt down some time in the mid-4th century AD.

“New Light on the Parisi: recent discoveries in Iron Age and Roman East Yorkshire” E. Riding Archaeological Society with University of Hull – editor P. Halkon 1989 (and subsequent editions) 7.

“Brading, Brantingham and York: a new look at some fourth-century mosaics” – R. Ling “Britannia – A Journal of Romano-British and kindred studies” Volume 22, 1991.