The Ghostly Tale of the 9th Legion

Welcome to Ominous October! This month, we will be delving into all things creepy and spooky - we’ll talk to all about ghosts, witches, curiosities, and viking zombies, and more hair raising history.

This time, we tell you one of the most famous ghost stories in York , and then we talk to Graham Harris of the Roman Bath Museum here in York  to learn about the most famous Roman legion to disappear from history, the Ninth Legion Hispania.

Listen and enjoy, and please consider leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!

Transcript

Miranda 00:00
Imagine yourself in a cold, damp cellar. You've been told to work on the plumbing down here, and the space is more claustrophobic than you expected. The cool stone walls come together in this small corner, and you hear the water dripping from the bare metal pipes as you see a spider scurry across your wrench. But then you hear something else, something different. A trumpet. But the sound seems to be coming from the walls…

You turn your head towards the wall, trying to understand what could be making that sound when suddenly, a man steps through the wall. But he’s wearing a golden helmet with a horse-hair plume coming out of it. As you continue watching, more and more men emerge from the wall, but you don’t stick around to see much more.

You've just seen the Roman ghost soldiers of York, and you run out of the cellar as fast as you can.

Miranda 01:10
In Viking times, a "thing" was a gathering, a place where leaders and warriors could meet and talk. In the 21st century, our "thing" is a virtual place, where history academics and enthusiasts from around the world can come together to share knowledge. I'm your host, Miranda Schmeiderer. So hold on to your helmets for this episode of That Jorvik Viking Thing podcast!

Welcome back to the podcast! For the ominous month of October we will be delving into all things creepy and spooky - we’ll talk to all about ghosts, witches, curiosities, and viking zombies, and more hair raising history. But first, on today’s episode we’ll discuss one of the most popular ghost stories in York - the Roman ghosts of Minster Yard - and also the most famous Roman legion to disappear from history, the Ninth Legion Hispania. 

Miranda 02:11
In 1953, in the cellar of the Treasurer’s House here in York, a young plumber named Harry Martindale was tasked with installing a new boiler to replace the antiquated, coal-powered system that the last owner, Frank Green, had installed. The area he needed to work on was through a low, brick-lined tunnel, effectively cutting him off from the rest of the house as he worked in the dark, damp area. Part of the stone flooring had been removed earlier in the project, cutting down to the Roman layer of York. A section of the Roman road that ran up to the fortress was revealed here, only a mass of cobblestone and dirt now. Harry rested the base of his ladder on these cobblestones as he went to work on the pipes above.

After nearly four hours of working down there, a horn sounded through the cellar. It was a distant noise, and though it was strange that the sound had managed to reach him down here in this remote part of the cellar, Harry thought it was simply a brass band playing nearby and thought nothing of it.

Until he heard the trumpet sound again. It sounded louder, like it was closer to him now, and it was very clearly not a brass band. Not a modern one, at least. As he stared at the grey brick wall beside him, a man stepped into the cellar. No, not stepped - he marched into the cellar. He was dressed in a simple tunic underneath a metal chestplate with a plumed helmet on his head, and he was blowing a curved trumpet. As the soldier marched across the cellar, Harry looked down and saw that the soldier seemed to be walking through the floor, not on top of it. His legs were only visible from the knee up, as if he was marching on a floor several inches down. 

But as Harry stared at the soldier, the sound of marching footsteps and horse hoofs filled the cellar. From the same wall the trumpeter had emerged from now came a horse, stepping in time to the trumpet, followed by around 20 more soldiers, walking in two columns. They were dressed in green, woven kilts, carrying a round shield on their left arms, a long wooden spear in their right hand. At their right side rested a short sword in a scabbard, and to Harry, they looked tired, dirty, and more than a little scruffy. 

Neither the soldiers nor the horse paid any mind to Harry as they marched through the cellar, keeping time with the pace that the trumpeter set. But the greatest shock for Harry was when he watched them cross over the area where the modern flooring had been cut away: the horse and soldiers were marching on top of the Roman cobblestones. He stared at them as they passed through the far wall, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared. 

Harry sat in shock, staring at the wall near the cobblestones long after their footsteps and trumpeting had faded. A drop of water splashed on his head, bringing him back to reality. He quickly packed up his tools and fled the cellar, bumping into the curator of the Treasurer’s House as he reached the top of the stairs.

The curator took one look at poor Harry, heaving as he tried to catch his breath, and said: “by the look of you, you’ve seen the Romans.”

Miranda 05:12
And that is the famous Roman ghost story of York. Whether or not it’s really ghosts is for you to decide, but we do know that York is steeped in Roman history. Most famously, the Ninth Legion Hispania was here, and this is the last place that historians can confidently say before they vanish from the record. 

Legio IX Hispana, also known as the 9th Legion, was a legion of the Imperial Roman army that existed from the 1st century BC to at least 108 AD. The legion fought in various provinces of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was stationed in Britain following the Roman invasion in 43 AD. The legion disappeared from surviving Roman records and there is no extant account of what happened to it. 

To learn more about this historical mystery, we spoke to Graham Harris of the Roman Bath Museum here in York. Here’s my conversation with him.

Graham  06:10
An intriguing story, isn't it? Up and down in that cellar, dressed as a Roman, I was scared stiff. I thought I'd feel a tap on the shoulder and there'd be a real one behind me. I spoke to Harry Martindale before he died. He knew what he saw. Yeah, it came out of the wall - horses as well. Yeah, trumpet and everything. But they never noticed him, just walked straight through. And of course, 18 inches beneath, so they walk in on the original floor level.

Miranda  06:31
The first thing I guess that we'll ask then is for the people who aren't familiar with Roman history at all. What is a Roman legion?

Graham  06:41
Well, it's the most important bit of the Roman army. They're the guys that defended the Empire. And they're the guys that won it. There's 5,000 men in a legion, and attached to them were another 5,000 of what they called auxiliary troops, who were sort of the second grade guys. And at any given time, there were around 30 to 33 legions. So you got 5,000 men in a legion, and about another 5,000 auxiliaries. So the whole Roman army at any time was no more than about 30 to 35,000 men. And they are the guys that won the Roman Empire

Miranda  07:19
That's not as big as you would expect for all that they conquered. Obviously, you said 33 legions, but we're today's talking about the Ninth Legion specifically. Why has the Ninth Legion really captured people's imagination, what makes them so special?

Graham  07:33
It's the disappearance, the so-called disappearance, but they were one of the very crack legions of the Roman Empire. And then they came to Britannia, and they got unlucky. And they invaded in 43 AD. Caesar had a go at it. He had a stab at it in 55 and 54 BC, but for various reasons he gave up on it. But then, the Emperor Claudius got his chance. And in 43 AD, he thought, "What can I do? I need to do something better than Caesar, the famous Caesar. I'll invade Britain and I'll stay," and he did. And they invaded in 43 AD with originally four  legions. The Ninth was one of those legions. And eventually they honed it down to three legions. So there were three legions in Britain during the Roman occupation, they were here for over 350 years, and the Ninth were one of them. And of course, they got, we'll say, unlucky because things didn't quite go their way. They got beaten up by Boudicca, we all know who Boudicca was. And 60 or 61 AD, the general consensus is that they lost half the legion, so about 2,000 troops. And then what happened to well, they ended up in Lincoln. And then in 71, they came from Lincoln, crossed the Humber and built this fortress, Eboracum in York - where we are now, of course.

Miranda  09:07
So we have a couple of artefacts that have their emblem stamped on it. What were they doing? Why was their emblem stamped all over everything? What was their day to day kind of life?

Graham  09:17
Oh, yeah, they always stamped and put their name on everything.

Miranda  09:21
So were they like building things, or I guess they were there making things? 

Graham  09:24
The original fortress was in wood, right? That's what they always did. And then after around about 30 years, they rebuilt it in stone, and that's the Romans saying, we're here, and we're here to stay. We're not going anywhere. But soldiers weren't just soldiers, you know, they were craftsmen, they would do the building themselves. There would be leather workers and metal workers and they could build the roads themselves, you know, so you weren't like modern armies, you know, you're not fighting all the time. So you have to keep yourself busy. I try to imagine what it was like for the locals. So 5,000 troops arrived, the Ninth Legion in this case in this area, the high ground the glacial moraine, between two rivers, perfect for a fortress and then suddenly, not quite suddenly, but suddenly there's this 50 acre building right in the middle of their lands, you know, and what on earth were they thinking of? You know, these guys are from the moon. And of course, the way Roman soldiers looked very blingy, yeah. As opposed to the Vikings, yeah. With all that shiny, glitzy stuff, and when they marched, you could hear them coming from miles away. You know, they weren't worried about that, they weren't worried about stealth quite so much. And so when the Ninth arrived here, it must have been a bit of a shock for the locals to say the least. 

Miranda  10:46
I'm sure, yeah, wouldn't have been like anything they'd ever seen before, I imagine. So one of the things that they've kind of left their mark on is a stone inscription that's currently in the Yorkshire Museum that says that the Ninth Legion was here in 108 AD, it says. It's very famous for being the last official kind of mark of them, I suppose for now. Yeah, well for now Exactly. So what happened after 108 AD do we think?

Graham  11:14
It depends who you talk to! It's a great mystery, isn't it? I think that the answer to the mystery lies beneath our feet here in York, you know, we've excavated 3% of Roman York. It is so far down, average is about four meters, 12-13 feet. So there's lots of evidence still, as to what happened. They'll be epitaphs, stamps, tile stamps, skeletons, all still down there. So we will find out what happened to them. I'm sure that the answer isn't in the written word. It's in the evidence beneath the ground in York. Yeah. But probably not in my lifetime. Yeah. 108, back end of 108. Actually, it was December, that was Emperor Trajan. So they can actually date that specifically, the Sixth Legion arrived around 122 with the Emperor Hadrian. So something happened to the Ninth between 108 and 122. But again, it depends on who you talk to. My theory is that they went up north at some stage, maybe at 118 AD, and they got beaten up. They might not even be at full strength again, you know, after the Boudicca episode, whatever was left of them, I'll throw in 500, came back down here to York. And then when the Sixth Legion came up with Hadrian, in 122, legions were always short, never at full strength. And so they soaked up what was left of the Ninth into the Sixth. 

Miranda  12:47
That makes sense. 

Graham  12:48
Yeah. So that's my theory, but yet to be proven, I'm right, of course. Yeah. They have found evidence of Ninth Legion officers and troops in various parts of the world, some people have said are evidence for the Ninth going off east. They found some bits and pieces in Nijmegen in Holland. Yeah, they found some tile stumps and evidence of an officer, a Roman officer from the Ninth Legion. But that doesn't mean that the Ninth Legion suddenly went from Britain to what was then Gaul, the Ninth Legion would have been all over, bits of the Ninth Legion would have been all over the Roman Empire. The Middle East is another place that the historian, some historians, say it could have been. I just, I like the story because it gets people interested in the Romans. 

Miranda  13:42
It certainly does. Yeah.

Graham  13:45
It's intriguing. And of course, the detail that we all know is the ghost tale of Harry Martindale, that little lad, apprentice plumber, falling off his ladder. That would have been the Ninth Legion. And as he explained it, I think there would have been auxiliary troops by what he explained. 

Miranda  14:04
So you do think it was the Ninth Legion that he saw then?

Graham  14:07
Most people agree with that, the way that they were dressed? Yeah, they've been on patrol.

Miranda  14:12
Because I think one of the things I read was saying that they, what he described was quite a particular type of uniform and everything, sort of have been with the ninth Legion probably was wearing?

Graham  14:23
Well, the intriguing thing is the colour of tunics. 

Miranda  14:26
And he said they were green, right? 

Graham  14:28
Yeah, we don't know. 

Miranda  14:29
Well, yeah.

Graham  14:30
There's no evidence. There's some hints on statues and things, but we don't really know. But yeah, he said green, which for the most, if you see most reenactors nowadays, they wear red. Yeah. There are some that do wear green. But that was intriguing. Yeah. And he pointed out that the sword was on the right hip, which is right we know that because your shield's in your left hand. So you draw your sword with your right hand. And lots of things. Yeah, that would suggest, I don't know, probably first century. So Ninth Legion time when they were here. Did they look foreign? You know, I don't know. He never said that they looked Spanish?

Miranda  15:13
Well, yeah. The Roman Empire was everywhere, weren't they? So they might have had? Yeah, exactly. African soldiers in North Africa.

Graham  15:19
Yeah, they would have looked pretty exotic. I mean, Eboracum at the time, if you were to go into the civilian settlement at the other side of the river in the Micklegate area, the sounds, the smells, the voices, the accents, would have been so exotic. You know, the Romans brought all this to Britain.

Miranda  15:40
It would have been quite a multicultural place, really, wouldn't it? And that's not necessarily what people imagine when they think of what you know, a Roman settlement would have looked like but of course they had people stationed all over the world really, didn't they? 

Graham  15:53
They did. 

Miranda  15:54
So it stands to reason that those same people would be here.

Graham  15:58
Yeah, very few of the soldiers, very few of the Ninth Legion would have been Roman. Yeah. from Rome. Yeah, per se. There were enough Romans to go around.

Miranda  16:05
No, no. Well, and you were saying they were here for hundreds of years. So I imagine-

Graham  16:11
Well over 350 years.

Miranda  16:13
A lot of these Roman soldiers probably never saw Rome, you know.

Graham  16:17
A lot of them would have settled here, you know, all the Legions, including the Ninth, you signed up for 25 years, if you made it to the end, and plenty did, you know you were made really, as long as the arthritis didn't get to you, you know, you get the plot of land from the government or some cash you could set up, you might have specialized in leather working, you could set up a leather working shop or shoe shop or something over in the civilian settlement. And there is modest evidence that, come 410, which is the day that they say that Romans was supposed to have left, some wouldn't have left at all. Do you know, again, this 3% that we've, we've excavated in York, there'd be a lot of evidence, I'm sure, that the Romans never really some of the wrongs never really left York. 

Miranda  17:06
Well, yeah, I suppose it's that this is the place they knew their entire life. So what would they have, you know, left for it? If this is their home, you know.

Graham  17:14
Which means there's still some of the last Ninth Legion around us, you could walk down Coney Street on a Saturday and maybe you're passing an ancestor of the Ninth Legion legionary soldier.

Miranda  17:25
Do you expect that - because obviously, we've hopefully got this big Roman dig coming up in the next year or so - do you think we might find any evidence of the Ninth Legion there?

Graham  17:35
I would hope so. I mean, the dig is in the civilian part of town, yes, on the banks of the Ouse, but that doesn't mean to say, you know, you won't find anything military over there. And the soldiers weren't allowed to marry, the Ninth, but you know, they had unofficial families. And yeah, that's where there would have been. So I would hope so. I can't wait, personally. The river Ouse was quite a bit wider then, about 10 foot lower. So we're gonna find the banks of the Ouse and then the bridge, which is very important, and we'll find out how wide the bridge and how big the bridge was, because there's only one bridge in Roman times. So that'll be intriguing, but that's gonna add to our 3%. Yeah, yeah. Why not? Yes. Yeah. Let's find the boys from the Ninth, anything. Anything at all? A tile stamp, you know, with a Ninth Legion on it? It could be IX. Yeah. Or it could be XIIII - found it done both ways, right? I said XIIII, I mean VIIII. There we go. Spot the deliberate mistake.

Miranda  18:47
Well, that's amazing. Is there anything else you feel like our listeners should know about the Ninth Legion?

Graham  18:53
It's just an important part of our modern Yorkies history. Yeah, history is important. Because you need to know what ladder your foot is on, what rung of the ladder your foot is on and how your ancestors and the people who walk this place 2,000 years ago, what rung of the ladder they were on, and living in a place like York, how can you not want to hear the voices of these people through the things that they left - the artefacts, the writings, these were people who were very much like us. They had similar worries and similar hopes. And these are the people who walked this very spot nearly 2,000 years ago. And we have to stop and listen to the voices. But the thing to push with the Ninth is that the answer to their disappearance is down there. Yeah. It will be there, we'll find something that shows the Ninth still is here.

Miranda 19:58
Special thanks to Graham Harris for being our guest today, and to ZapSplat for the use of their sound effects. Head over to our Instagram at JorvikViking to see some of our Roman finds from the Ninth Legion - and if you want to see them in person, come visit DIG: An Archaeological Adventure! You’ll be able to dig up artefacts from the Roman era all the way up to the Victorians in our replica dig sites, and see some of the original artefacts on display. Check out DigYork.com to book tickets. 

You can also learn more from Graham by visiting his museum, the York Roman Bath Museum, one of York’s oldest attractions. Where you can step underground to see the remains of Roman York or Eboracum as it was then known. Discover what life was like for the soldiers who lived and worked here and why a visit to the Baths was so important!

Stay tuned for the next episode, where we’ll hear about magic in the medieval era. 

20:50
Thank you for listening to That Jorvik Viking Thing podcast. You can find us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and anywhere you get your podcasts. Transcripts and chapter markers are available on JorvikThing.Buzzsprout.Com. Don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple podcasts, and if you enjoyed the show, share us with a friend! It’s the best way to help support your favourite Viking podcast.

That Jorvik Viking Thing Podcast is a production of the Jorvik Group and York Archaeological Trust. Researched by Miranda Schmeiderer and Ashley Fisher. Written and produced by Ashley Fisher. Sound designed and edited by Miranda Schmeiderer.