Pennocrucium
PENNOCRUCIUMa town in the territory of the Cornavii, in Britannia Romana, sometimes identified with Penkridgein Staffordshire, but more probably Stretton. ( Itin. Ant. p. 470; Camden, p. 636.)
[T.H.D]Settlement at the junction of the roads to Wroxeter and central Wales (Watling Street) and the branch to Chester. Its military importance is shown by the presence of at least five forts, which have yet to be satisfactorily related.
1) Kinvaston: a fort of ca. 10.4 ha, reduced to 7.2 ha, which may be Neronian; 2) Stretton Mill: a sequence of two forts, the smaller 1.4 ha in extent but both as yet undated; 3) S of the road a fort of ca. 2 ha may be later in the sequence; 4) indications of marching camps N of the road at Water Eaton, and a small camp by the river Penk. A straggling civil settlement, presumably with shops and tabernae, grew up along the road. The small defended enclosure with three ditches and a wall (?) astride the road is, like others along Walting Street, presumably early 4th c.
A mile to the S at Engleton is a villa excavated in 1937. It was a winged-corridor type on the river, occupied from the late 2d to the middle of the 4th c. The name appears in the Antonine Itinerary.
BIBLIOGRAPHYMilitary sites: Trans. Birmingham Arch. Soc. 69 (1951) 50-56; 73 (1955) 100-8; 74 (1956) 1-11; JRS 43 (1953) 83-84; 48 (1958) 94; 55 (1965) 76-77; 63 (1973) 233f. Villa: Staffs Record Soc. (1938).
C. WEBSTER