In 80 Agricola took Legio XIV Gemina north on his punitive expeditions against the Picts in Scotland. In 78 governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola led campaigns to suppress the tribes in North Wales and the druids on Ynys Môn. In the mid 1st century Caesar's Legio XIV Gemina took over the site from the Thracian Auxilia in preparation for the invasion of Wales and replaced the fort with a much larger legionary fortress.

The post was a key frontier position because it defended the River Severn valley as it come out of Cambria ( Wales) as well as protecting the route to the south that lead to the Wye valley. The site is strategically located near the end of Watling Street, the primary Roman trunk road that ran across Britannia from Dubris ( Dover). Wroxeter was first established in the early years of the Roman conquest of Britain as a frontier post for a cohort of Thracian Auxilia who were taking part in the campaigns of the governor, Publius Ostorius Scapula. Roman ruins at Viroconium Cornoviorum, photographed during excavation by Francis Bedford and digitally restored Hence the term 'Cornoviorum' distinguishes the site as the Viroconium 'of the Cornovii', the Celtic tribe whose settlement became civitas.

When the Cornovii were eventually subdued by the Romans, their capital was moved to Wroxeter and given its Roman name. The original capital of the local British tribe of the Cornovii was the impressive hillfort on the Wrekin known as *Uiroconion. 'man-wolf') is believed to have been a masculine given name meaning ' werewolf'. Viroconium is a Latinised form of a toponym that was reconstructed as Common Brittonic *Uiroconion (' of *Uirokū'. The settlement probably lasted until the end of the 7th century or the beginning of the 8th. At its peak, Viroconium is estimated to have been the 4th-largest Roman settlement in Britain, a civitas with a population of more than 15,000. Viroconium or Uriconium, formally Viroconium Cornoviorum, was a Roman city, one corner of which is now occupied by Wroxeter, a small village in Shropshire, England, about 5 miles (8.0 km) east-south-east of Shrewsbury.

Viriconium book