Lactodurum was a town

Town

A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...

 in the Roman province

Roman province

In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...

 of Britannia

Britannia

Britannia is an ancient term for Great Britain, and also a female personification of the island. The name is Latin, and derives from the Greek form Prettanike or Brettaniai, which originally designated a collection of islands with individual names, including Albion or Great Britain. However, by the...

. Today it is known as Towcester

Towcester

Towcester , the Roman town of Lactodorum, is a small town in south Northamptonshire, England.-Etymology:Towcester comes from the Old English Tófe-ceaster. Tófe refers to the River Tove; Bosworth and Toller compare it to the "Scandinavian proper names" Tófi and Tófa...

, located in the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 county of Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...

.

Towcester lays claim to being the oldest town in Northamptonshire and possibly, because of the antiquity of recent Iron Age

British Iron Age

The British Iron Age is a conventional name used in the archaeology of Great Britain, referring to the prehistoric and protohistoric phases of the Iron-Age culture of the main island and the smaller islands, typically excluding prehistoric Ireland, and which had an independent Iron Age culture of...

 finds in the town, to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the country

Oldest town in Britain

The Oldest town in Britain is a title claimed by a number of settlements in Great Britain.-Thatcham:Thatcham in Berkshire is often claimed as the oldest town in Britain, since its occupation can be traced back to a mesolithic hunting camp, which was discovered there beside a Post-glacial rebound...

. There is evidence that it was settled by humans since the Mesolithic

Mesolithic

The Mesolithic is an archaeological concept used to refer to certain groups of archaeological cultures defined as falling between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic....

 era (middle stone age). There is also evidence of Iron Age burials in the area.

Watling Street

In Roman times

Roman Britain

Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...

, the Watling Street

Watling Street

Watling Street is the name given to an ancient trackway in England and Wales that was first used by the Britons mainly between the modern cities of Canterbury and St Albans. The Romans later paved the route, part of which is identified on the Antonine Itinerary as Iter III: "Item a Londinio ad...

 road (now the A5) was built through the area and Lactodorum, probably a garrison fort as implied by the name 'Dairymen's Fort', was established on the site of the present day town.
Some local people believe that the original pre-Roman settlement was about half a mile to the south of the present town, at the top of the hill at the crossing of a section of north-south road which became part of the Roman Watling Street and an east-west cattle drovers road (now a minor road called 'cow pastures'), and that there was a small trading post type of settlement there from which the name Lactodorum is derived.
Two candidate sites for the Battle of Watling Street

Battle of Watling Street

The Battle of Watling Street took place in Roman-occupied Britain in AD 60 or 61 between an alliance of indigenous British peoples led by Boudica and a Roman army led by Gaius Suetonius Paulinus. Although outnumbered, the Romans decisively defeated the allied tribes, inflicting heavy losses on them...

 , fought in 61AD, are located close to the town, these are Church Stowe

Church Stowe

Church Stowe is a village in the Daventry district of the county of Northamptonshire in England. It is the largest settlement in the civil parish of Stowe Nine Churches.- External links :*...

 which is located 7km to the northand Paulerspury

Paulerspury

Paulerspury is a civil parish and small village in South Northamptonshire, England. It is approximately south of Towcester and north of Milton Keynes along the A5 road...

 which is 5km to the south.

The fort was soon replaced by a civilian settlement which may have grown out of the surrounding 'vicus

Vicus (Rome)

In ancient Rome, the vicus was a neighborhood. During the Republican era, the four regiones of the city of Rome were subdivided into vici. In the 1st century BC, Augustus reorganized the city for administrative purposes into 14 regions, comprising 265 vici. Each vicus had its own board of...

'. Late 1st century timber buildings were replaced in stone the following century, and included a possible mansio

Mansio

In the Roman Empire, a mansio was an official stopping place on a Roman road, or via, maintained by the central government for the use of officials and those on official business whilst travelling.-Background:The roads which traversed the Ancient World, were later surveyed,...

. By the mid-2nd century, there were numerous shops lining the roadsides. 3rd and 4th century private residences were decorated with tesselated pavements and painted with decorative plaster.

Town Wall

Lactodurum was encompassed by a wall that was strengthened at several points by stone and brick towers. Substantial remains of one of these towers could be seen until the 1960s, when it was demolished to make way for a telephone exchange. The wall was also surrounded by a ditch part of which became the Mill Leat on the east side of the town. The modern day St Lawrence's Church in Towcester is thought to occupy the site of a large Roman civic building, possibly a temple

Roman temple

Ancient Roman temples are among the most visible archaeological remains of Roman culture, and are a significant source for Roman architecture. Their construction and maintenance was a major part of ancient Roman religion. The main room housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was...

; although there was also a bath house

Thermae

In ancient Rome, thermae and balnea were facilities for bathing...

 in this area. Small fragments of Roman pavement can be seen next to the Church's boiler room.

The Roman suburb

Suburb

The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...

s consisted of timber and cob

Cob (building)

Cob or cobb or clom is a building material consisting of clay, sand, straw, water, and earth, similar to adobe. Cob is fireproof, resistant to seismic activity, and inexpensive...

 buildings within small rectilinear plots, probably representing small holdings. However, there was also evidence of much industry: smithing, pottery, lead, pewter and bronze working.