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THE ROMAN BATH HOUSE

The Roman’s Twentieth Legion had its headquarters at Chester 2,000 years ago and it is presumed at this time that an auxiliary detachment of the legion was based in a fort sited on what is now Ysgol y Llys (formerly St. Chads) in Princes Avenue, Prestayn.
A Roman bath house dating back to this period was discovered in the 1984 excavations at a site in Melyd Avenue.

The bath house was re-excavated. It was built of masonry and had three rooms, two being heated from a furnace at the western end of the building. The cold changing room at the east end had a cold plunge bath attached to its south side. The bather began by undressing in the changing room and then moving into the warm room, where he would stay for a while, before moving into the intensely hot room, where the hot damp atmosphere would promote profuse sweating. Here the body would be oiled and scraped clean with a Strigil (a skin scraper).

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OFFA’S DYKE PATH

During the 8th century, King Offa of Mercia ordered a great dyke to be built, stretching from sea to sea, to mark the western boundary of his kingdom with Wales. In places it is still visible as a bank up to 25 feet high with a deep ditch alongside. Beginning at Chepstow on the Severn Estuary, Offa’s Dyke Path follows the course of this ancient earthwork to Prestatyn on the coast of North Wales. It passes through scenery of great beauty and variety ranging from the woodlands of the spectacular Wye gorge to the windswept ridges of the Black Mountains and from the rolling hills and secluded valleys of mid-Wales to the heather-clad Clwydian Hills. Along the way it visits a succession of historic border towns and attractive villages including Monmouth, Hay-on-Wye, Knighton, Montgomery and Welshpool.

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