Noviomagus Reginorum
Noviomagus Reginorum was Chichester's Roman heart, very little of which survives above ground. It lay in the land of the friendly Atrebates and is in the early medieval-founded English county of West Sussex. On the English Channel, Chichester Harbour, today eclipsed by Portsmouth Harbour, lies south. Name The name of the town is given as "Noviomagus" in Ptolemy and "Navimago regentium" in the Ravenna Cosmography. This is believed to be a Latinization of a Brittonic placename meaning "new plain" or "new fields", in other words a clearing in woodland. Its epithet is drawn from the name of the inhabitants — reconstructed variously as Reginorum, Regnorum, Regnentium, Regnensium or Regentium— in order to distinguish it from other places with the same name, notably Noviomagus in Kent. The Regini were either a sub-tribe of the Atrebates or simply the local people designated the 'people of the Kingdom' by the Roman administration. In the second-century Antonine Itinerary register of Roman roads, the name is abbreviated to "Regno". History The settlement was first established as a winter fort for the Second Augustan Legion under Vespasian (the future emperor) shortly after the Roman invasion in AD 43. Their timber barrack blocks, supply stores, and military