The Towns of Roman Britain Part 4

It is doubtful if it were a British settlement. The Roman munic.i.p.ality, or colonia, of Glevum, was founded by Nerva between 96 and 98. Part of the original walls of the town may still be traced.

ISLE OF WIGHT.--Called by the Romans, _Vectis_; Wight being a corruption of this word.

This island was known in early times to the ancients, and appears to have been used as a summer or sea-bathing resort. There are interesting remains of Roman villas at Brading and Carisbrooke.

KENCHESTER, or Magni, or Magna, sometimes Magnis, is situated on the Wye, about 4 miles west of the city of Hereford.

Discoveries of coins and other objects suggest that British villages existed here. The Watling Street running from Wroxeter to Caerleon pa.s.ses near, communicating with Stoney Street, south of the Wye. The site has yielded considerable evidence of Roman occupation.

Kenchester appears to have been a small town, in shape an irregular hexagon, with an area of some seventeen acres, surrounded by a stone wall pierced by four gates. The princ.i.p.al street, 15 ft. wide, ran from east to west; the houses contained tesselated pavements, hypocausts, leaden and tile drains; coins of various periods; fibulae (some of silver), gla.s.s, pottery, and the like, abound; while two inscriptions (one dated A.D. 283), lend a distinctive Roman colouring. Suburbs lay outside; and there was a villa a mile to the west at Bishopstone. The town, though small, had pretensions to comfort and civilization; it is the only important Romano-British site in Herefordshire. A legion was stationed here.

LANCASTER.--Castra ad alaunam--camp on the Lune, from Gaelic _all_--white. Therefore we have _al_--white; _avn_, or _afon_--water; which the Romans latinized into Alauna.

LEICESTER.

Before the Roman invasion, Leicester was inhabited by the Coritani.

Under the Romans it formed part of the province of Flavia Caesariensis. Watling Street,[3] the Fosse Way and Via Devana converge on Leicester.

[Footnote 3: This does not actually pa.s.s through Leicester, but is twelve miles away at nearest.]

The princ.i.p.al Roman stations near were:

Ratae --Leicester; Verometum --Borough Hill; Manducosedum--Mancetter; Benones --High Cross.

In this region Roman remains have been found at: Leicester,[4]

Rothley, Wanlip, Hasby, Bottesfold, Hinckley, Sapcote, and Melton Mowbray. In 1771 a Roman milestone of the time of Hadrian (76-138) was discovered at a spot two miles from Leicester. Near Blaby, over the Soar, is a bridge locally known as the Roman Bridge.

[Footnote 4: There is to be seen _in situ_ beneath the Great Central Station here a beautiful and almost perfect tesselated pavement.]

LINCOLN.--_Llyn_--a deep pool, and _Colonia_. The Britons called it _Lind-coit_. The name _Linn-dun_, of which _Lindum_ is the Romanised version, means _The hill-fort of the pool_.

The territory hereabouts was first settled by Belgae; who, however, at the time of Caesar's invasion, had become a mixed race with the real Britons. The country was conquered by the Romans about 70 A.D., and formed part of the province of Flavia Caesariensis. The tribe which occupied Lincolnshire were the Coritani, who had Lindum and Ratae for their tribal centres. In this territory remains of British camps are found at Barrow, Folkingham, Ingoldsby, Revesby, and Wells.

Also traces of Roman camps are discoverable at Alkborough, Caistor, Gainsborough, Gadney Hill, near Holbeach, Honington, near Grantham, South Ormsby, and Yarborough. The Roman roads in this neighbourhood are nearly perfect. There is Ermine Street on the eastern side of the Cliff Hills and the Fosse Way, running S.W. from Lincoln. There is a famous arch--the Newport--at Lincoln. It is one of the most perfect specimens of Roman architecture in England. It is sunk fully eleven feet below the present level of the street, and has two smaller arches on each side, the one to the west being concealed by an adjoining house. The Ermine Street pa.s.ses through this gate, running north from it for eleven or twelve miles as straight as an arrow.

Many Roman coins and ornaments have been found in the immediate vicinity of this gate. In the Cloister garden of the Cathedral are preserved a tesselated pavement and the sepulchral slab of a Roman warrior.

LONDON.--Londonum, Londinium, the Augusta of the Romans. _Llyn Din_--the Black Llyn or Lake, or perhaps from Celto-Saxon _dun_, or _don_--a hill fort. This fort may have been situated where abouts St.

Paul's now stands, or, in a more extended form, it may have been const.i.tuted by Tower Hill, Cornhill, and Ludgate Hill; bounded thus by the Thames on the South, the Fleet on the West, and the Fen of Moorfields and Finsbury (afterwards by Hounsditch and the Tower) on the East.

It must be premised that the course of the Thames, the containing bounds, the depth of the stream, the character of the rivulets--such as the Lea, the Fleet, Wall-brook, West-Bourne, Tye-Bourne--presented marked differences in early historic days from the appearance they show to-day. The sites north and south of the line where London Bridge now stands const.i.tuted firm ground, with a tendency to an elevation in the north. These facts determined the position of the British settlement. At that part of the river the Britons had, if not a ford, at least a ferry, and finally a rough bridge--perhaps of coracles or boats--the progenitor of the n.o.ble structure now existing. The ferry went from what is now Dowgate to a similar opening still existing to the west of St. Saviour's, Southwark.

A British settlement of an early date would not now be thought to deserve the name of town. No less an authority than Julius Caesar tells us that it was nothing more than a thick wood, fortified with a ditch and rampart, to serve as a place of retreat from the inroads of enemies. At that time, we may, therefore, imagine a clearing carved out of the forest, extending probably from the site of St. Paul's Cathedral to that of the Bank of England, the dwellings of the Britons being spread about the higher ground looking down upon the river, including Tower Hill. At the time of the revolt of the Iceni, the Roman governor, Paulinus Suetonius, being unable to make a stand, abandoned London to Boadicea, who entirely destroyed the city, after having ma.s.sacred the inhabitants. We find London holding an important place in the Antonine Itinerary, Londinium being a starting point for nearly half the routes described in the portion devoted to Britain.

Traditionally, Constantine the Great walled the city, at the request of his mother Helena, who is said to have been a native of Britain.

Probably we should place the northern wall somewhere along the course of Cornhill[5] and Leadenhall Street; the eastern in the direction of Billiter Street and Mark Lane; the southern in the line of Upper and Lower Thames Streets; the western on the S.W. side of Walbrook. About the centre of each side might be placed the four main gates, corresponding with Bridge Gate, Ludgate, Bishopsgate and Aldgate.

[Footnote 5: Perhaps somewhat to the north of the modern street. A portion is to be seen in the churchyard of St. Giles, Cripplegate.]

The vision of Geoffrey of Monmouth of a great British city, Troy Novant, founded by Brut, a descendant of aeneas, must be relegated to the limbo of myths. A more probable story is that one Belinus formed a port or haven on the site of the present Billingsgate, though it does not follow that he built a gate of wonderful structure, still less that he built over it--as the story goes--a prodigiously large tower. It should be noted that "gate" may not mean a gate at all in the modern sense of the word, but only an opening or an entrance, even as the "Yats" leading to the harbour of Yarmouth.[6] Mayhap this settlement const.i.tuted the headquarters of Ca.s.sivellaunus, which were taken and sacked by Julius Caesar. At all events, Tacitus (61-117 A.D.) the first Roman author who mentions London by name, speaks of it as an important commercial centre. It had not, up to A.D. 61, been dignified by the name of a Colony. A temple, dedicated to Diana, appears to have stood on the site of our Eastminster, S. Paul's, and another, to Apollo, at Westminster. When Tacitus wrote, Verulamium and Camulodunum possessed mints, whilst London did not. The earliest Roman London must have been a comparatively small place, with a fort to command the pa.s.sage of the Thames. Perhaps to the Romans are due the primitive embankments which were designed to restrain the vagaries of the river at the times of tide and flood. London Stone, built into another stone in Cannon Street, outside the wall of St.

Swithin's Church, is generally considered to be a milliarium (to mark so many thousand paces) or central station from which to measure distances, but it may conceivably have had some more ancient and peculiar designation in connection with a public or sacred building.

Old London lies 20 feet or so below the present street level, so that, when excavations are made for any purpose, Roman remains are frequently found and parts of the Roman wall uncovered.

[Footnote 6: In like manner we have Margate, Kingsgate, Westgate, Ramsgate, Sandgate, &c., indicating probably sites where a pa.s.sage has been cut through the cliff by a stream or human agency.]

Remains--pavements, etc.--are to be seen in abundance in the Guildhall Museum.

When the old General Post Office in St. Martin's-le-Grand was demolished a large series of Roman rubbish pits was disclosed. The lowest portions of 120 of these were carefully excavated. The "finds"

included a few whole pots and many thousands of fragments of Samian and coa.r.s.e pottery, besides building materials, whetstones, beads, knives, coins, and other small articles. It has been possible to a.s.sign dates to most of the holes--between A.D. 50 and 200. By the a.s.sociation in the same hole of datable with undatable pottery, light has been thrown upon many types of the latter.

Not long ago, while the buildings 3-6 King William Street were being demolished, another series of five large Roman pits was uncovered.

From the fragments obtained therefrom nine Samian vessels of the first century have been pieced together, and are now in the Guildhall Museum. These include a decorated vessel, finer than any previously found in London, and two specimens of a shape unknown hitherto in England. A lamp, two coins, and other objects of pottery and bronze were also obtained from this source.[7]

[Footnote 7: Besant's _London_ and his _Westminster_ convey a fascinating account of what was a labour of love on the part of the author to compile. All sorts of unexpected pleasures await the wanderer in London's highways and byeways. One of these may be noticed in respect of the Roman bath in the Strand. Turning down Strand Lane (a narrow pa.s.sage between King's College and Surrey Street), a few yards bring one to the baths. The lane itself is as ancient as anything in London, inasmuch as it must have been in very early times a path by the side of the stream fed by the bath spring, and perhaps by the Holy Well, which afterwards gave its name to the notorious Holywell Street, this stream finally flowing into the Thames.]

It is a moot point whether the Saxon migration along the Thames waterway was checked by the presence of London, which remained a city stronghold since Roman times, but it is evident that a gap was made in the history of the city just after the departure of the Romans, and the theory of continuous occupation can hardly be maintained in face of the fact that the mediaeval City streets in no case follow the Roman roads traces of which lie beneath the mediaeval houses.

LYMPNE, or _Lemanae_.--Pevensey District, Anderida.

It is considered that Reculver was the earliest Roman coast-fortress in Kent, that Richborough was founded somewhat later, and that Lympne and Pevensey const.i.tuted the latest stations; also, that (probably even before the time of Constantine) a division of the Romano-British fleet was stationed at Lympne and a series of buildings erected by their crews. When Romney Marshes were covered by an inland sea, and many streams drained this eastern side of the Andred Forest, the Romans established the military station Lemanae, at the estuary of the chief of those streams, and defended it by the castrum, the ruins of which are now known as Stutfall Castle. Some of the stones of this castrum were used by Archbishop Lanfranc in the construction of a church at Lympne.

MALDON, Ess.e.x.--Situated on an acclivity rising from the south side of the Blackwater--44 miles E.N.E. of London, and 16 S.W. from Colchester or Camulodunum, with which it has sometimes been identified, or rather, confounded.