Galava Galava ( or Ambleside Roman Fort ) was a fort in the Roman province of Britannia . Dating to the 1st or 2nd century , its ruins are located on the northern shore of Windermere at Waterhead , near Ambleside , in the English county of Cumbria ( formerly in Westmorland ) . It guarded the Roman road from " Brocavum " ( Brougham ) to " Glannaventa " ( Ravenglass ) . There is also assumed to have been a road south to the fort at " Alauna " ( Kendal ) . The remains of the fort were described in 1915 , as follows : The excavation of the Roman fort in Borrans Field near Ambleside … was continued by Mr . R . G . Collingwood , Fellow of Pembroke College , Oxford , and others with much success . The examination of the rampart s , gates , and turret s was completed ; that of the main interior buildings was brought near completion , and a beginning was made on the barracks , sufficient to show that they were , at least in part , made of wood . The fort , as is now clear … , was an oblong enclosure of about 300 × 420 feet , nearly 3 acres . Round it ran a wall of roughly coursed stone 4 feet thick , with a clay ramp behind and a ditch in front . Turrets stood at its corners . Four gates gave access to it ; three of them were single and narrow , while the fourth , the east gate , was double and was flanked by two guard - chambers . As usual , the chief buildings stood in a row across the interior . Building I — see plan … — was a pair of granaries , each 66 feet long , with a space between . They were of normal plan , with external buttress es , basement walls , and ventilating windows ( not shown on plan ) . The space between them , 15 feet wide , contained marks of an oven or ovens ( plan , B ) and also some corn ( plan , C ) and may have been at one time used for drying grain stored in the granaries ; how far it was roofed is doubtful . Building II , the Principia or Praetorium , a structure of 68 × 76 feet , much resembled the Principia at Hardknott , ten miles west of Ambleside , but possessed distinct features . As the plan shows , it had an entrance from the east , the two usual courts ( EF ) , and the offices which usually face on to the inner court F . These offices , however , were only three in number instead of five , unless wooden partitions were used . Under the central office , the " sacellum " of the fort , where the standards and the altars for the official worship of the garrison are thought to have been kept , our fort had , at A , a sunk room or cellar , 6 feet square , entered by a stone stair . Such cellars occur at Chesters , Aesica , and elsewhere and probably served as strong - rooms for the regimental funds . At Chesters , the cellar had stone vaulting ; at Ambleside there is no sign of this , and timber may have been used . In the northernmost room of the Principia some corn and woodwork as of a bin were noted ( plan , C ) . The inner court F seemed to Mr . Collingwood to have been roofed ; in its north end was a detached room , such as occurs at Chesters , of unknown use , which accords rather ill with a roof . In the colonnade round the outer court E were vestiges of a hearth or oven ( plan , B ) . Building III ( 70 × 80 feet ) is that usually called the commandant ' s house ; it seems to show the normal plan of rooms arranged round a cloister enclosing a tiny open space . In buildings II and III , at D , traces were detected as of ditches and walling belonging to a fort older and probably smaller than that revealed by the excavation generally . Small finds include coins of Faustina Iunior , Iulia Domna , and Valens , Samian of about AD . 80 and later , including one or two bits of German Samian , a silver spoon , some glass , iron , and bronze objects , a leaden basin ( ? ) , and seven more leaden sling - bullets . It now seems clear that the fort was established about the time of Agricola ( AD 80 – 5 ) , though perhaps in smaller dimensions than those now visible , and was held till at least AD 365 . Mr . Collingwood inclines to the view that it was abandoned after AD 85 and reoccupied under or about the time of Hadrian . The stratification of the turrets [ 12 ] seems to show that it was destroyed once or twice in the second or third centuries , but the evidence is not wholly clear in details . The granaries seem to have been rebuilt once and the rooms of the commandant ' s house mostly have two floors . Access . The site is open to the public . Finds are on display at Kendal Museum .