A garden with a very special water feature and an iron cross plucked out of a river help Echo Memories plunge into the depths of local history.

A HISTORIC house with the craziest of crazy paving is on the market for just under £200,000.

The back garden in Piercebridge appears to have been tiered with crazily-paved patios on different levels. Some are just a couple of feet down; the deepest, beside an old shed, must be 12ft down.

An old arch frames the patios and as you stumble from crazy level to crazy level, you realise that at the very bottom there’s an old culvert, fringed with pretty, falling flowers.

The name of the house explains the crazy paving: the Bath House. This was a Roman baths when Piercebridge was a Roman fort.

Piercebridge, on the northern banks of the Tees, was known to the Romans from the end of the First Century, although they didn’t start building their fort until the middle of the Second Century.

The fort was to defend where Dere Street, which runs from York to Hadrian’s Wall, crossed the River Tees.

The Northern Echo: Map showing Piercebridge Fort and Bath House

There is great archaeological debate about how the Romans crossed. The established version is that after their initial wooden bridge was washed away, they rebuilt in stone about 100 yards downstream, but because the Tees has moved northwards since Roman times, the remains of that second bridge are now marooned in a field.

Other archaeologists say that the second bridge is in fact a dam which enabled them to keep the Tees at a consistently navigable depth so that they could sail barges from the coast.

This controversy illustrates how little we know about the Romans at Piercebridge. We don’t even, if we’re honest, know what they called the settlement: Morbium seems to be the favoured suggestion, but they might also have called it Magis or Vinovium.

The lack of knowledge is due to the current village being built on top of the fort – homeowners are understandably reluctant to have their houses dug up. Digs have, though, uncovered a vicus – a civilian settlement – containing 170 buildings outside the fort walls.

Inside the walls, they have uncovered a barracks which held about 90 centurions, and a large latrine where about 30 people could go about their business simultaneously.

It is a communal latrine, with the centurions sitting cheek by jowl, as it were, on a long wooden bench with strategic holes in.

Their deposits fell into the culvert below and were swept away to the Tees. A waterfilled channel ran at the centurions’ feet inside the latrine.

They washed their personal sponges in it after they had cleansed themselves because they had not yet invented toilet paper.

The latrine is in the northeast corner of the fort. The other great discovery is in the south-east corner: the Bath House.

It was found in a private back garden in 1975 by Durham University archaeologist Peter Scott.

It appears to consist of three baths: a frigidarium, a tepidarium and a caldarium.

Baths were a Roman meeting place, like a leisure centre.

A centurion may work out first with a few weights before taking a warm bath in the tepidarium.

Then he’d move on to the sauna – the caldarium. Two jars were found in the Piercebridge floor for perfumed oils.

A masseur would apply the oils to the skin and then remove the sweat and the dirt with a strigil – a metal scraper. Just as they hadn’t invented toilet paper, the Romans hadn’t discovered soap.

After the strigil, the centurion would wash off in the tepidarium before plunging into a refreshing cold bath in the caldarium, which was usually deep enough for a swim.

At Piercebridge, bobbins and needles made of bone were discovered at the bathhouse which suggests that your clothes could be repaired while you bathed.

Counters made of glass and bone were found, suggesting that the Romans played boardgames at the baths – although no dice were discovered.

Also found were hairpins made of deer horn – a feminine accessory suggesting there was mixed bathing.

The Bath House is being sold by Jessica Trudgill who has lived there since 1986. Her husband, Derek, died in January and some of his pen and ink drawings of local scenes appeared in Memories 33 in May. Smiths Gore is inviting offers in the region of £195,000 for the three-bedroomed property, on 01325-462966.