Colchester castle. Essex

Colchester is oldest recorded town in Britain (by Pliny the Elder,died AD 79). Before the Roman conquest of Britain it was a centre of power for Cunobelin - known to Shakespeare as Cymbeline - king of the Catuvellauni (c.5 BC - AD 40), who minted coins there. Its Celtic name, Camulodunon, on the coins of Cunobelinus, means 'the fortress of [the war god] Camulos'. The town Camulodunum (now Colchester) in Essex may have been named after him as with the legendary city Camelot.

Cunobelinus, Shakespeare's Cymbeline, a chief of the Catuvellauni who was called Britannorum rex by the Roman historian Suetonius, made Camulodunum his capital after defeating the local Trinobantes. After his death around AD 42, his sons fell out with Rome and gave the emperor Claudius an excuse to place Britain under Roman rule. Camulodunum became a colonia with a Temple to the Emperor Claudius. Camulodunum served as a provincial Roman capital of Britain, but was destroyed in Boudica's rebellion (AD 61). The Normans built this vast castle-keep on the foundations of the earlier Roman temple of Claudius using tiles and stone from this and the ruins of other Roman buildings in the town, so it provides a link to the era of the historical model for Cymbeline.

Photo: Filip Walter. Picture and some data courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia).