Roman roads and how they were made (R. Wellbye)

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The Roads of the Romans.

How the Exploring Motorist Can Trace Them To-day.

Map

WHAT roadfarer whose mind is receptive to the impressions suggested by the countryside he is traversing fails to find his curiosity aroused by the old Roman roads which stride across the land with an imperial disdain for natural features? Instinctively the modern road user realizes a kind of fellowship with the fearless roadmakers of Rome, which easily bridges the fifteen or eighteen centuries that have elapsed since their great work was wrought.

You scan a map. A straight bit of road catches your eye, conspicuous among all its sinuous neighbours by running for six, eight, or maybe a dozen miles in an almost direct line. It stimulates your curiosity. You perhaps succeed in tracing this old line of road on and across country until you reach either some modern town which perpetuates the site of a Roman town or military post, or some point where a few banks of earth, or the record of finds of pottery, tiles, coins, etc., betoken the {743b} former existence of a Roman station of some sort.

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Occasionally the map will help you by inserting some such legend as “Roman road from Wroxeter to Kenchester,” but in most cases you are left the pleasure of finding out for yourself. Large numbers of these relics are not even marked “Roman Road” at all. Quite close to London there is an interesting instance of this, which supplies a remarkable opportunity for original investigation. Take a half-inch map of Surrey: what do you make of the fact that, between West Wickham and Titsey, the Kent-Surrey boundary runs for some four or five miles in a dead-straight line, while everywhere else it is very sinuous? The antiquaries and the topographers have almost entirely overlooked this feature, but there is hardly any mistaking the Roman touch here. The line, if produced, runs absolutely direct from Telegraph Hill, New Cross, to Titsey Hill, just two such eminences of which the Romans would have made use in the siting of a road, if they had wanted one hereabouts. Then notice that more to the south the modern road through Edenbridge runs dead straight {744a} for two miles—not quite in alignment with the shire frontier, but not more out than could be accounted for by the diversion entailed in descending so steep a hill as Titsey. Down through Sussex the map has little to suggest, but the facts mentioned are pretty strong presumptive evidence that the Romans had a road running from Watling Street, near London, across the wealden forest, down to the coast, and connecting up somehow or other with the important fortress of Pevensey.

This may serve to illustrate the line of inquiry to be pursued in trying to unravel the mystery of some lost Roman thoroughfare. One must be circumspect, however, and not build too much on a single straight bit of road, for not every such way is Roman; to establish Roman origin other things must be taken into consideration.

Picking Up the Trail of a Roman Road.

Stane Street

Fascinating as is this sport on the map, you soon long to repeat the pursuit in reality, as you journey over the face of England. Here is sport indeed, for unless you take Shank’s Mare, which is too slow, your quarry will often give you the slip. You pick up the scent readily enough on some great main road; presently the main road swings out of the Roman line, never to return, but a by-way carries you a stage further on your quest. Later, the by-way tires of the straight line and only a grassy lane marks the Roman route, and this being rough, or perhaps boggy, you must, perforce, turn aside and work round somehow in the endeavour to head it off. When at last, however, you get back to the ancient route you find a mere footpath marking it on one side of your lane, and no trace of it at all on the other side, or, as occasionally will happen, merely a low, green bank running obliquely across a field. Another time there is nothing for it, if you are keen on the quest, but to park the car and tramp on foot over the Downs, but your reward here will probably be greater, as in such lonely hill country more of the old highway will be likely to remain. One of the most fascinating trips of this kind to be made is the exploration of the Sussex Stane Street from Bignor Hill, near Arundel, to Eartham Woods; here, you can walk for some three miles on the actual embankment of the Roman way, with the solitude of the Downland around you, the sea a blue haze on your left, and the tapering spire of Chichester cathedral, marking the heart of the old Roman city, always in {744b} the centre of your vision as you look along the dead-true line of the ancient road.

The story has often been told of how the Romans made their imperishable highways in no less than four layers. How, after digging a shallow trench and ramming thoroughly the soil, they first set a layer of fair-sized stones, forming a hand-pitched foundation; how, next, a layer of rubble; how on this they spread a layer of concrete, of which broken pottery and brick and small stones formed the “aggregate,” and how, finally, they surmounted this monumental construction with a paving of hexagonal flagstones, beautifully dressed and fitted together to form an unbroken and even surface.

Ermine Street

On the much-used high roads in Italy and Southern Gaul this elaborate construction was perhaps the rule, but although it was sometimes carried out in this country it was very far from having been universal here, a fact proved by excavations, which have disclosed a variety of other forms of construction, simpler, upon the whole, but, of course, always substantial. These supermen of Rome, as we are apt to picture them, who laid out these wonder roads, were in reality very human persons. Although, like our modern highway surveyors, they had their rules of craft, they adapted themselves to circumstances and made use of local material—hence the variety that is found. It was the same with the layout of the roads. It is true that they had a fondness for the straight line—a straight road was easier to plan, it was also safer for troops to traverse, but observation shows that in many hilly or mountainous districts their roads often wound about to avoid awkward gradients.

How Did They Plan in Straight Lines?

One of the most teasing of questions is how the Romans managed to get such straight lines. The late Mr. Codrington, the engineer (whose book on the topography of these ancient roads is invaluable to the would-be explorer), suggested smoke signals, while Mr. Belloc has just put forward the idea that a chain of men were probably employed, which would straighten itself out something after the manner in which a line of soldiers “dress” in drilling. The performance must command our admiration, for although the Romans had no maps to help them, and although the terminal points of the long, straight limbs of their highways were often invisible one from the other, the lines, when they came to be recorded on our accurate modern maps, were found to be amazingly direct. Thus, the Fosse Way, in all the 180-odd miles between Lincoln and Petherton (Somerset) is nowhere more than six miles from the bee line between those points!

Reginald Wellbye.