THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 199
Town, Country, and Travel in Roman Britain
13-5. Town, Country, and Travel in Roman Britain
The civilisation of the towns appears to have been of the Roman type. Not only do the buildings declare this: inscriptions, and, in particular, casual scratchings on tiles or pots which can often be assigned to the lower classes, prove that Latin was both read and written and spoken easily in Silchester and Caerwent Whether Keltic was also known, is uncertain: here evidence is totally lacking. But it may be observed that if Keltic was understood, one would expect to meet it, quite as much as Latin, on casual graffiti, while the total disappearance of a native tongue can be paralleled from southern Gaul and southern Spain and is not incredible in towns. Nor do the smaller objects found at Silchester and Caerwent shew much survival of the Late Keltic art which prevailed in Britain in the pre-Roman age and which certainly survived here and there in the island. But while Romanised, these towns are not large or rich. It has been calculated that Silchester did not contain more than eighty houses of decent size, and the industries traceable there — in particular, some dyers' furnaces — do not indicate wealth or capital.
The Romano-British towns, it seems, were assimilated to Rome. But they were not powerful enough to carry their Roman culture through a barbarian conquest or impose it on their conquerors.
From the town we pass to the country. This seems to have been divided up among estates commonly (though perhaps unscientifically) styled villas. Of the residences, etc. which formed the buildings of these estates many examples survive. Some are as large and luxurious as any Gaulish nobleman's residence on the other side of the Channel. Others are small houses or even mere farms or cottages. It is difficult, on our present evidence, to deduce from these houses the agrarian system to which they belonged, save that it was plainly no mere slave system. But it is clear from the character of the residences and the remains in them that they represent the same Romanised civilisation as the towns, while a few chance graffiti suggest that Latin was used in some, at least, of them. A priori, it is not improbable that, while the towns were Romanised, the countryside remained to some extent Keltic or bilingual. But all that is certain as yet is that scanty evidence proves some knowledge of Latin. These country houses were very irregularly distributed over the island. In some districts they abounded and included splendid mansions: such districts are north Kent, west Sussex, parts of Hants, of Somerset, of Gloucestershire, of Lincolnshire.
Other districts, notably the midlands of Warwickshire or Buckinghamshire, contained very few villas and indeed, as it seems, very few inhabitants at all. The Romans probably found these latter districts thinly peopled and they left them in the same condition. Besides country houses and farms, the countryside also contained occasional villages or hamlets inhabited solely by peasants; such have been excavated in Dorsetshire by the late General Pitt-Rivers. These villages testify, in their degree, to the spread of Roman material civilisation. However little their inhabitants understood of the higher aspects of Roman culture, the objects found in them — pottery, brooches, etc. — are much the same as those of the Romanised towns and villas and are widely different from those of the Keltic villages, such as those lately excavated near Glastonbury, which belong to the latest pre-Roman age.
The province was, on the whole, well provided with roads, some of them constructed for military purposes, some obviously connected with the various towns: whether any of them follow lines laid out by the Britons before A.D. 43 is more than doubtful. In describing them, we must put aside all notion of the famous "Four Great Roads" of Saxon times. That category of four roads was a medieval invention, probably dating from the eleventh or twelfth century antiquaries, and the names of the roads composing it are Anglo-Saxon names, some of which the inventors of the "Four Roads" plainly did not understand. If we examine the Roman roads actually known to us, we discern in the English lowlands four main groups of roads radiating from the natural geographical centre, London, and a fifth group crossing England from northeast to southwest. The first ran from the Kentish ports and Canterbury through the populous north Kent to London. The second took the traveller west by Staines (Pontes) to Silchestcr and thence by various branching roads to Winchester, Dorchester, Exeter, to Bath, to Gloucester and south Wales. A third, known to the English as Watling street, crossed the Midlands by Verulam to Wall near Lichfield (Letocetum), Wroxeter, Chester (Deva) and mid and north Wales: it also, by a branch from High Cross (Venonae) gave access to Leicester and Lincoln. A fourth, running north-east from London, led to Colchester and Caister by Norwich and (as it seems) by a branch through Cambridge to Lincoln. The fifth group, unconnected with London, compromises two roads of importance. One, named "Fosse" by the English, ran from Lincoln and Leicester by High Cross to Cirencester, Bath and Exeter.
Another, probably called Ryknield street by the English, ran from the north through Sheffield and Derby and Birmingham (of which Derby alone is a Roman site) to Cirencester and in a fashion duplicated the Fosse. There were also other roads — such as Akeman street, which crossed the southern Midlands from near St Albans by way of Alchcster (near Bicester) to Cirencester and Bath — which must be considered as independent of the main scheme. But, judged by the places they served and by the posts along them, the five groups above indicated seem the really important roads of southern or non-military Roman Britain.
The road systems of Wales and of the north were military and can north coasts to Carmarthen and Carnarvon, while a road (Sarn Helen) along the west coast connected the two, and interior roads — especially one up the Severn from Wroxeter and one down the Usk — connected the forts which guarded the valleys. These roads, however, need further exploration before they can be fully set out. In the north, three main routes are visible. One, starting from the legionary fortress at York, ran north, with various branches, to places on the lower Tyne, Corbridge, Newcastle (Pons Aelius), Shields. Another, diverging at Catterick Bridge from the first, ran over Stainmoor to the Eden valley and the Roman Wall near Carlisle. A third, starting from the legionary fortress at Chester (Deva) passed north to the Lake country and by various ramifications served all that is now Cumberland, Westmorland and west Northumberland. Several of these roads appear, as it were, in duplicate leading from the same general starting-point to the same general destination, and no doubt, if we knew enough, we should find that one of the two routes in question belonged to an older or a later age than the other.
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