Roman roads in Britain

All roads lead to Rome
All roads lead to Rome. If there's one thing that everyone knows about the Romans, it's that they were big on road building – thousands of miles of the things, straight as a die, criss-crossing the empire and providing fast, direct routes to and from the capital.

Ermine Street, the search for a stretch of which featured in the Cheshunt programme in the 2002 series, is far from being one of the longest Roman roads; those are to be found in mainland Europe. But it is one of the best known – and for the Romans, most important – in Britain. It linked London with Lincoln (passing through Ancaster, which also features in the 2002 series) before continuing on to the Humber, inland from the modern road bridge, at Winteringham. Long, straight stretches of it can still be plotted on a map; much the same route is followed by modern roads heading north from London today.

The same is true of other Roman roads in Britain. Among the best known are Watling Street, which ran from London to Wroxeter, and later to Chester; and the Fosse Way, which cut across England from Exeter in the south west to Lincoln in the east. The Fosse Way followed a route in use since prehistoric times, along the limestone ridge that has provided an important trading route – and natural boundary – throughout English history. In the early Roman era, around 47 AD, it marked the first boundary of the new Roman province.

Did Roman surveyors build dead straight?
As elsewhere in the empire, Roman roads in Britain were indeed built as straight as possible. The Roman surveyors – agrimensores – were not only extremely accurate in their work; they also had no need to worry about who owned or used the land along the way. As conquerors, they could simply choose the most direct route from A to B, building their roads across anyone's property or farmland that happened to stand in their way.

This didn't mean, however, that all Roman roads were built in a dead straight line. The Romans were sensible enough to by-pass hills, mountains, marshes and forest, where they posed particular obstacles; and they would seek out suitable crossing points at any rivers along their route. Here, where they could not use fords or ferries, their engineers would construct bridges as essential links in the communication chain.

Roman roads were the communication arteries of their day. Although their primary purpose in the early days after conquest was to speed the movement of troops from one part of the conquered lands to another, they subsequently became even more important as the means by which trade could be carried on between different parts of the empire. They also enabled important information or instructions to be communicated between Rome and its provinces – and between its provincial governors and the areas under their control.

The economy and the imperial post
In Britain, the new road system was an essential part of the Roman economy. In the countryside this was based around villas, which produced far more food than they needed for their own purposes and provided supplies to the army as well as to the growing urban population. The roads also made possible the mass production and trade of pottery and other goods, the 'industrial' production of which became commonplace in Britain in the third and fourth centuries AD. The cursus publicus, or imperial postal system, depended on the roads, too, to take official notices and correspondence around the country. Using relays of horses, it was possible for a messenger to travel 100 miles a day when his business was urgent enough. Stables and lodging houses would have been positioned at regular intervals along the way on major routes.

Travellers' guides
Travellers could call upon various guides or maps to find their way. One of these, the Antonine Itinerary, has survived to modern times and provides an invaluable guide to Roman Britain, listing all the major forts, towns and cities and the distances between them. Another, known as the Peutinger Table, resembles an early AA route map offering the same sort of information.

Road building
Most Roman roads were built – in the first place, at least – by soldiers. Roman armies travelled with their own surveyors and engineers and whatever equipment they needed for construction work (including their nightly camps, which they would erect themselves at the end of each day's march) along the way. Later improvement and maintenance work would often be carried out by prisoners or forced labour.

Local conditions, including the availability of suitable construction materials and the time available to complete the job, dictated the details of road construction, but the basic principles were constant throughout the empire. The road usually took the form of an embankment, raised above the level of the surrounding land, with drainage ditches on either side. The road would be built up in a series of layers, comprising a foundation of larger rocks, followed by smaller stones, gravel and sand laid down in successive layers and pressed firmly into place. A cobbled surface was commonplace in towns or areas of heavy use, but often it would just be firmly compacted gravel.

The embankment – or agger – was cambered for drainage and could be 10 or more metres wide. It was rarely less than about three metres in width on major routes, so as to allow room for two wheeled vehicles to pass.

Roman roads were so effective that in the later empire they actually became a liability because invading forces could travel along them just as quickly as the Roman armies. Indeed, some roads were deliberately blocked during the later years of the Roman occupation in Britain. Everywhere they went into decline after the Roman departure. Not until the advent of the railways in the 19th century did Britain again enjoy such a speedy and efficient communications network.

Text only