04/08/2026
Recycling Roman Stones:
the Anglo Saxon crypt at Hexham Abbey built in 674AD is Constructed almost entirely from stone salvaged from the nearby Roman fort and town of Corbridge.
Along with many well carved pieces of decorative Roman stonework, it contains a fascinating Roman inscription. The “GETA” Stone, a dedication slab dating to around AD 208. Today, most of it is built into the roof of the north passage of the crypt, with another fragment preserved in the north wall of the nave.
The inscription records that Emperor Septimius Severus and his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, ordered the construction of a Roman granary. The work was carried out by a detachment of a Roman legion under the command of Lucius Alfenus Senecio, the imperial governor of Britain.
The reconstructed Latin inscription translates to:
“The Emperor Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Pius Pertinax Augustus, the Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius Augustus (Caracalla), and Publius Septimius Geta Caesar built this granary through the agency of a detachment of the legion under Lucius Alfenus Senecio, imperial propraetorian legate.”
What makes this stone especially remarkable is that it originally included the name of Geta. After Septimius Severus died, Caracalla had his younger brother murdered in AD 211 and ordered his name erased from inscriptions throughout the Roman Empire as part of a damnatio memoriae—the official condemnation and erasure of a person’s memory. This makes surviving references to Geta exceptionally rare and historically significant.
