About
The Senhouse Roman Museum at Maryport stands on the site of the Roman fort of Alauna — the westernmost fort of the Hadrian's Wall system, perched on the clifftops above the Solway Firth where the Wall reaches the sea. This remarkable location alone distinguishes the museum: Alauna was not at the end of Hadrian's Wall in a literal sense but the beginning of the Cumbrian Coast system, a chain of towers, milefortlets, and forts that continued the Wall's defensive logic southward along the shore.
The museum's collection is distinguished by the largest collection of Roman military altars from any single site in Britain — a series of altars erected by successive commanding officers of the garrison over nearly three centuries of Roman occupation. By convention, each new commanding officer erected a new altar dedicated to the Discipline of the Emperor and the standards of the regiment, and the accumulated series from Alauna — seventeen altars dedicated to the same combination of deities by successive prefects of different auxiliary regiments — constitutes a unique archaeological document of Roman military religion, career patterns, and the rotation of units along the northern frontier.
The altars are displayed in purpose-built illuminated cases that allow close study of their inscriptions, and the museum provides expert interpretation of what these texts reveal about the organisation, religion, and social life of the Roman garrison. The commanding officers who dedicated them — their names preserved for nearly two thousand years — came from across the Roman world: North Africa, the Danubian provinces, Gaul, Spain, and Britain itself.
Beyond the altars, the collection encompasses Roman sculpture in the round, relief carvings, inscribed tablets, military equipment, coins, pottery, personal ornaments, and everyday objects from the fort and its associated civilian settlement (vicus). The sculpture includes a notable head of a deity and several architectural fragments that indicate the quality of stone-working at this frontier fort. Finds from the fort bathhouse — always the most archaeologically productive building on a Roman military site — are particularly well represented.
The museum building was itself part of the Senhouse family estate, which has owned the land since the medieval period and whose antiquarian collecting in the seventeenth century began the assemblage of Roman material that forms the core of the present collection. The fort earthworks are visible from the museum and freely accessible, and the clifftop position above the Solway gives views across to the Scottish coast that the Roman garrison would have observed with equal attention.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
📅 Best Times to Visit
Quietest: Tuesday, Wednesday
Busiest: Saturday, Sunday
💡 Weekday mornings in spring or autumn for uncrowded viewing of the altars
💡 Visitor Tips
- The altar gallery is the unmissable highlight — spend time reading the inscriptions with the interpretive panels; the cumulative effect of seventeen altars by successive commanding officers is deeply impressive.
- Walk the fort earthworks after your museum visit — the clifftop views across the Solway to the Scottish coast are spectacular and help you understand why the Romans considered this site so strategically important.
- The museum is about 12 minutes' walk from Maryport railway station — an excellent reason to arrive by the scenic Cumbrian Coast railway line from Carlisle.
- Combine with a visit to Maryport's Victorian harbour and the town's maritime history, visible from the clifftop fort site.
- The museum holds audio guides — collect one at the entrance for a richer experience of the altar inscriptions and their historical context.
- The fort earthworks are freely accessible at any time — if you arrive outside museum opening hours, you can still walk the ramparts and appreciate the site.
- Check the museum website for the latest seasonal opening hours — winter hours are reduced (Thursday–Sunday only).
- The Hadrian's Wall Passport, which records visits to sites along the entire Wall system, can be stamped at Senhouse Museum.
Highlights
The Altar Collection — Largest in Britain
The collection of seventeen Roman military altars from the fort of Alauna is without parallel at any single Roman site in Britain. By Roman military custom, each commanding officer erected a new altar to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the Discipline of the Emperor, and the standards of the regiment upon taking command.
The accumulated series at Alauna — spanning roughly the second to fourth centuries AD — allows historians to trace the succession of auxiliary units and commanding officers at this frontier fort over nearly three hundred years, and to observe the formulaic yet individually varied language of Roman military religion.
Inscribed Altar of Caecilius Optatus
Among the finest individual altars is that erected by Marcus Caecilius Optatus, prefect of the First Cohort of Baetasians — a unit recruited in the Rhineland — in the early third century. The inscription, rendered with exceptional care by a skilled letter-cutter, exemplifies the formal conventions of Roman military religious dedication.
The altar preserves Optatus's name, his unit, his rank, and his religious observance for nearly two thousand years — a biographical document of a man who commanded perhaps five hundred soldiers at the edge of the Roman world.
Roman Sculpture Collection
Beyond the altars, the museum holds a significant collection of Roman sculpture from the fort and its vicus — the civilian settlement that grew up outside the fort gates. A carved head of a deity, relief panels, and architectural fragments indicate that the buildings at Alauna were decorated with a sophistication matching other frontier forts.
The sculpture provides evidence of the religious life, aesthetic tastes, and social organisation of the Roman community at Maryport.
Hadrian's Wall System and Cumbrian Coast Defences
Alauna's role in the wider Hadrian's Wall system is explained through maps, models, and interpretation that place the fort within the strategic logic of the northern frontier. The Cumbrian Coast extension — towers and milefortlets continuing south from the Wall's western terminus at Bowness-on-Solway — is often overlooked by visitors following the standard Wall route, and the museum provides essential context for understanding why the Romans considered the Solway shore as important as the inland Wall itself.
Collections
The Senhouse Roman Museum holds the most important collection of Roman antiquities from the Cumbrian coastal section of the Hadrian's Wall system, with the altar collection — seventeen military altars from the fort of Alauna — as its internationally significant centrepiece. The full collection encompasses altar dedications spanning three centuries, sculptural material including architectural fragments and deity representations, epigraphic material, military equipment from armour to weapons, personal adornment objects, coins ranging from second to fourth century, ceramics including Samian ware and local handmade pottery, and environmental material from excavated deposits.
Documentary holdings include excavation records from investigations of the fort and vicus, photographic archives, and the antiquarian records of the Senhouse family collection.
The museum serves as the repository for all post-excavation material from the Maryport Roman fort, and holds research archives relating to the Cumbrian Coast Roman defences.
The Altar Gallery
Permanent display of the seventeen Roman military altars from Alauna — the largest collection from a single Roman site in Britain
The Frontier
Hadrian's Wall and the Cumbrian Coast defence system: strategic context and daily life at the western end of the Roman frontier
Life at Alauna
Objects from daily life — military, domestic, religious, commercial — from the fort and its civilian settlement
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.