Residents of a North-East town could be forgiven for thinking the Romans had returned yesterday when they woke up to find street and other signs and been translated into Latin.

Baffled residents scratched their heads as the new bilingual signs appeared at the station in historic Wallsend, North Tyneside.

For revellers returning from a night of excess on town the new sign vomitorium (for one) is not intended to induce them to throw up their kebabs -- rather it is the "way out".

The local chip shop has been turned to the pisces et holera and the public toilets have been reborn as the latrinae publicae.

On the station's map of the town the 1960s Forum shopping centre became the fori tabernae and those looking for the town hall were directed to the curia oppidi.

The transformation has been brought about with the help of Artist Michael Pinsky's lottery-funded project inspired by Wallsend's links with Hadrian's Rome.

One bemused Metro passenger Mark Hamilton, 43, said: "I don't know what it's about but I quite like it.

"The words on the signs look like the some of things I come out with after a night in the pub."

Newcastle University student Sarah Walters, 21, said: "I think it's great that the town is making something of its past.

"It is Wallsend's greatest claim to fame, we're at the end of Hadrian's Wall and there is a wealth of Roman history here.

Other changes at the Metro station - or statio metropolitana - include the renaming of the pictures-while-you-wait machine to picturae aplificantur dum manes and the pub to the taberna.

Commissioned by Nexus, the operators of the Metro network, and the Arts on the Riverside project, Pinsky was asked to create a work of art in the station reflecting past and present Wallsend.

His work, called Pontis, is intended to remain in place for three months, but could become a permanent feature.

Mr Pinsky said: "When I first visited Wallsend I wasn't aware that its name came from the fact that it is the town at the end of Hadrian's Wall.

"I wanted to bring that fact into my work so that it was really visible to people passing through. "I enjoyed using a dead language - it means my signs cross time as well as the language barrier."

He was helped in the translations by Latin expert Professor Donald Hill from Newcastle University.