The area around Alnwick was, for most of the period of Roman occupation, within the militarised borderlands, north of Hadrian’s Wall. There is, however, no evidence of a Roman presence in what is now Alnwick town.
Alnmouth may have been known to the Romans – the estuary of the Aln does feature on one of Ptolemy’s maps.
The Roman road, now called the Devil’s Causeway, which ran from the Wall just north of Corbridge to Tweedmouth, passed about six miles to the west of Alnwick. There was a Roman fort at Learchild, at the junction of the Devil’s Causeway and another road which originated at Rochester.
During the period of Roman occupation, and in the years after (until the arrival of the Angles and Saxons) it is likely that local people continued to live in the defended settlements that first emerged during the Iron Age.