_The Decline of the Roman Road: The Period at its Occurrence: Gaps:
Roman Roads which Fell into Disuse: The Relationship of the Modern to
the Roman System: Watling Street: Stane Street: The Short Cut Between
Penkridge and Chester: Peddars Way: The coming of the New Civilization
in the Twelfth Century._
i
The next phase in the development of the English Road is the very
gradual breakdown of the great Roman ways. The Dark Ages--that is,
the 500 or 600 years between the fifth and the tenth or eleventh
centuries--formed the period during which this process took place.
The Roman Road in England suffered the fate of all our ancient
civilization. It very slowly declined and coarsened, but it remained
the one necessary means of communication. We have no dates and no
contemporary record after the fourth century for Britain, but we have
the analogy of Northern France, in which we know that the upkeep and
repair of the great Roman roads continued until well into the seventh
century, and we have the evidence of the Roman roads as they now stand
before us, with the result of their very gradual and only partial
breakdown in a use of centuries. We have also the fact that much
the most of the great battles took place on or near the Roman roads
until the twelfth century, that most of the new great monastic and
other houses were built near them, or on them, and that the ports most
commonly used in the Dark Ages were nearly always ports with a Roman
road serving them. We can thereby roughly judge (although we have no
direct evidence) what happened to the system.
In the first place, the Roman Road was so solidly built that centuries
of neglect did not entirely destroy its usefulness. Sections of each
road disappeared: some from causes which are easily explicable,
some under the most obscure conditions the causes of which it seems
impossible to discover. Every great Roman road in Europe, and even
those in Britain (which are better preserved than those in the most
part of the Continent) shows these gaps. Sometimes a whole great
section of road will almost entirely disappear--more often it is
a stretch of a few miles. Thus the whole of the short cut through
Penkridge to Chester, which certainly existed and some elements of
which can be reconstituted, has disappeared; so that most maps of
Roman Britain erroneously mark the connection between London and
Chester as going round by Shrewsbury. As an example of a short part
utterly disappearing, one can take any one out of hundreds; the best
example near London (typical of many others) is the gap in the Roman
road between the Epsom racecourse and Merton. The road is evident as
a clearly marked high embankment above the steep rise at Juniper Hill
near the Dorking road to within a mile of Epsom racecourse. Then it
suddenly ceases. There is no change in the soil. It is on chalk before
and after its disappearance; and yet, just here, at about a mile from
Epsom racecourse, it completely and totally disappears. There is no
trace even of its foundation left from thence onwards northwards
until you get to the site at Merton (which was state land and almost
certainly the last camp and halting-place on the road before London).
How the road crossed the marshes of the Wandle we can only conjecture,
as we can only conjecture where it lay exactly between Epsom and those
marshes. Why it should disappear in the marshes is evident enough.
The causeway sank in. Why it should disappear under the plough to the
south of the marshes, as Roman roads nearly always do on arable land,
can also be explained. But why it should wholly disappear on the last
mile or two of chalk is inexplicable. One theory put forward is that in
the great wars of the Dark Ages portions of the road were deliberately
destroyed to impede the progress of an enemy, just as a railway may
be destroyed in modern warfare. But this theory will hardly hold
water. The gaps that have disappeared thus, often come just where you
have the best soil for marching independently of artifice, and where,
therefore, an interruption of them would least incommode an advance.
For instance, they are perpetually found on high chalk; and, further,
the disappearance is hardly ever connected with a defensive position.
From the point of view of the development of the English road system
much the most interesting point in the fate which befell the Roman
roads is to be found at the crossings of rivers, especially of rivers
which have marshy banks or flow through wood or sodden valleys. The
neglected Roman embankment across the marsh fell out of use in the Dark
Ages. Probably the bridge first broke down, and the barbarous time had
not the energy or skill to repair it; then the mere process of time
caused the swallowing up of the Roman viaduct, unrelieved by repair, in
all marshy land. It is difficult to affirm a negative, but I can recall
not one example of a long Roman viaduct still wholly in use across such
an approach to water.
[Illustration: A DERELICT ROAD SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS]
What happened, then, in these sections was this. The bridge and the
viaduct disappeared in the Dark Ages--that is, some time between the
fourth and the eleventh centuries. Sometimes this gap led to the
complete isolation of the district immediately concerned. The best
example I know of this is the breakdown of the crossing of the Arun at
Romans Wood, in the county of Sussex. There the Roman road was a hard
causeway over very thick clay land, quite impassable for armies in
winter, and rapidly overgrown by oak scrub and thorn when neglected.
The result of the breaking down of the Roman bridge at the “Romans
Wood” crossing was to isolate West Sussex. There was no other way from
the north, for the clay and thorn scrub rapidly arose and obliterated
the road. It was in use as far south from London as Ockley; but the
breakdown of the bridge at Alfoldean broke the continuity further on,
and that, I believe, is one of the reasons why Sussex was so isolated
as only to be converted to the Christian religion a hundred years later
than the rest of the country.
But to return to the behaviour of the Roman Road in the marshy
approaches of a river. I say that the embankment having been swallowed
up and the bridge broken, the men of the Dark Ages had to find for
themselves some new way of crossing, and it is interesting to note that
they here fell back upon the primitive methods common before Roman
civilization came. They abandoned the straight line and picked their
way by the driest bits they could find, so that the new crossing of
the marshy district grew up sinuous and haphazard. Later, when the new
road system developed with the Middle Ages, this new road was often
straightened and a new bridge thrown across the river upon its line;
but, save for a very few exceptions, the Roman approach had disappeared.
There are scores of examples of this up and down the country. The most
prominent usually bear such names as Stamford, Stanford, Stafford,
Stratford, Stretford, etc., all of which come either from the word
“street” or the word “stone,” coupled with the word “ford.” They thus
signify that in the valleys of the river the “going” or passage had
been hardened artificially with stone derived from Roman work. A very
good example of the way in which the newer track replaced the older
one is to be found at Stamford, in Northamptonshire. The accompanying
sketch shows the trace of the Roman road from its leaving Burghley Park
to the old crossing of the river and beyond. There are still broken
traces of the old embankment on the north side of the stream, but it is
clear that this straight line across the marsh broke down, that a new
way was picked out and slowly hardened, and a new bridge built to suit
it. What the men of the Dark Ages did here was to keep to the drier
patches to the east where a ford crossed the river, and then curve
round again westward, again to join the road on the heights north of
the river. This new passage took over the name of the “Stone” ford,
where the old road had crossed. A bridge was thrown in due time across
the new ford, and the town shifted towards the new bridge and acquired
its new name from the crossing.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch IX]
One form of the Roman Road, and one only--a very rare form--never
disappears: it is the cutting through hard sand. Here and there in
England--I know not how often, but I have myself found few traces of
them; I should doubt if there were much more than a dozen--you get a
clear cutting upon a Roman road serving no modern or useful purpose,
and almost certainly dating from the construction of the way. There is
the trace of the one at Ashurst, near my home--that with which I am
most familiar and which I have measured most carefully. If the cutting
be made in dry sandy soil of fair consistency and hardness, it can
remain almost indefinitely with an unmistakable outline. There may
naturally have been many other cuttings originally in softer or more
yielding soils which have got filled up, but the only ones I know are
through sand, which soil also tends to form those sharp ridges through
which a cutting might suggest itself as more economical than a too
steep gradient.
ii
The Roman Road not only disappears through causes which I have
called inexplicable and under the obvious influence of marsh or of
cultivation, it also fell into disuse, even where it did not disappear,
for reasons both explicable and inexplicable. There are cases where
the falling into disuse is frankly not to be explained, though these I
have found mainly upon the Continent. For instance, in the road from
Rheims to Chalons you have the Roman road running almost parallel to
the later road, the later trace having been made for no reason that we
can discover--not serving any new towns or villages--a mere duplicate
of the old way. But there are more cases where the disuse of a section
of the Roman Road can clearly be explained by the need for visiting
centres of population, production, and commerce. The Roman system for
the serving of places off the main straight road was by side roads
perpendicular to the main road. The relics of these you still see on
many of the Continental roads--a direct perpendicular lane or avenue
joining up the château and its dependencies or the neighbouring town
with the main highway. When the Dark Ages came and the main roads
degraded, the by-lanes and paths which had grown up as offshoots to
them and which led to the estates and villages and towns and ports and
quarries, etc., to one side or the other of the Road came to be used
more frequently. The main travel between distant towns was less, the
local travel grew more important in proportion. And as this development
proceeded sections of the Roman Road tended to fall into disuse. The
local roads would be maintained and the section of main road would be
left unrepaired.
We have seen that the main cause of the breaking down of the Roman Road
was marsh and the crossing of river valleys. Not only was this process
true of natural marshes, especially at the sides of a river, it was
true of a special case which is reproduced over and over again on the
map of England, and for which I will take as a particular example a
very fine case near Norton Park, in Northamptonshire.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch X]
Here the Watling Street, the great Roman road from London to the
north-west, crossed the valley of an insignificant stream; there was
no marsh originally, and there is none to-day. There was only a small
running of water, over which a culvert was thrown. The stream ran
under the main Roman embankment through this culvert. Now, when the
Dark Ages came and the roads fell into disrepair the first things
to go, naturally, were the culverts. They got blocked up. Once they
got blocked up the water dammed up on the higher side and began to
undermine the embankment. By the time this had made the road, though
still standing, impassable, travel had found a new way, usually _down
the stream_ away from the mere thus formed. Further centuries and the
recovery of civilization cleared the ground: the embankment either was
washed away or swallowed up in the mere and its subsequent marsh, the
stream resumed its original course, the dry ground reappeared, but the
trace of the Roman road upon either side across the depression was
lost for ever and there was substituted for it the modern road, making
a curve out of the direct line and only recovering it again after the
obstacle had been passed.
iii
The gradual decay of the Roman Road in the Dark Ages was not everywhere
the same, and the consequence is that the remaining fragments of Roman
roads are connected in different ways with the modern road system which
gradually grew out of them.
There are four types--overlapping, of course--of the fate attaching to
the Roman roads of this country. They are, as I have said, the root
of all our road system. All English roads subsequent to the period of
the Roman occupation have grown out of the great network laid down for
ever by the Roman engineers. But the fortune which the original road
suffered, the way in which a modern system developed from it, were not
uniform. There were four divergent developments, which ran thus:
(1) The Roman Road is preserved as a basis of the modern road, and
remains a main artery: of this the great example is the Watling Street,
in the first few days’ marches north-west of London.
(2) The Roman Road remains clearly the basis of the system of local
roads which developed from it, and, though disappearing in sections,
is, upon the whole, preserved; of these the great example is the Stane
Street road from Chichester to London.
(3) The Roman Road, having produced a system of local roads based upon
it, has almost entirely disappeared and has left the local system alone
to witness to its original importance, just as filigree work remains
after you have melted away the core of wax upon which it was built.
Examples of this are very difficult to discover, precisely because the
original country has gone. But the process can be followed here and
there by a careful examination, and I think that, upon the whole, the
best example is that of the series of roads which grew up out of the
short cut between Penkridge and Chester.
(4) The Roman Road remains, in some parts at least, but, its original
purpose having been such that it was of no continual use in the Dark
Ages, the local system of roads can only indirectly be referred to it.
Of this the great example is the famous Peddars Way, running through
East Anglia.
iv
(1) The preservation of the Watling Street as an example of a
continuously used Roman road for several days’ march north-west of
London is due to various causes.
In the first place, it was very little interrupted by marsh. It ran
everywhere on dry land, and the main cause of breakdown--the swallowing
up of a causeway after the destruction of its bridge--did not affect
it. But this is the least of the causes which have preserved this piece
of road.
Second, and more important, was the establishment along it of set
stations which remained inhabited, and the chain of which was not
interrupted by active warfare. Watling Street here presents very
interesting evidence of what really happened during those early pirate
raids which are generally, but erroneously, called the Anglo-Saxon
Conquest. They did not so seriously disturb the life of the country as
to break down this main artery of communication. It lies transverse to
the raids, and yet it was maintained. And in this connection we must
also note the continued importance of London.
Great Roman towns suffered, of course, from the pirate raids between
(somewhat before) the year 500 and the year 600, as did all the rest of
the island. They suffered not only from those raids of pirates across
the North Sea, but also from the raids of pirates from Ireland, and
also from the raids of Highlanders coming over the wall from the north.
But though they suffered they kept their place in the national scheme.
No province in the Roman Empire lost less of its town sites in the Dark
Ages than did England. No part of Europe has so large a number of old
towns based upon Roman foundations: and London was the chief of them
all. London may have been disturbed by the raids--it probably was.
There was probably a certain amount of looting from time to time, and a
good deal of fighting outside its walls, but it always maintained its
permanence, its character of being the economic centre of the island.
It is particularly noticeable that every great Roman road out of London
has remained intact, and Watling Street beyond others.
The third cause of survival was probably the excellence of the original
construction, though here we must hesitate a little because we cannot
but note that the Great North Road to York, which was quite as
important and which was twin to the north-western road, has suffered
very grievous modification indeed. But there can be no doubt that the
construction of the Watling Street was very thorough, and that this
expenditure of economic effort preserved it through the Dark Ages as
much as anything did.
Oddly enough, what is in most cases the strongest motive of all for the
preservation of a road was here entirely absent, and that is what I
have called the “potential” between the two terminals. When there is a
long and continued motive for joining up two terminal points the Road
has a cause of survival superior to any other. There was, and remains
to this day, an extremely strong “potential” of this kind between the
ports serving the Channel straits, with their nucleus at Canterbury,
and the economic capital inland at London. It therefore, as the
Roman road between the one terminal and the other, remained permanent
throughout the centuries, with the exception of the deflection towards
the Thames which grew up in the Dark Ages to serve the landing places
at Gravesend. But such a “potential” is entirely lacking for the
north-western road communication--so far as we know--to go between
London and Chester. The trade with Ireland ceased almost during
the early Dark Ages. The north-western road led nowhere. If it was
preserved, therefore, as it _has_ been preserved, it must have been due
to other causes which escape us. There it runs, however, still almost
uninterruptedly used, from the Marble Arch in London to Oakengates in
Shropshire, and in places still acts as part of the main artery leading
from south-east to north-west.
v
(2) STANE STREET. The Stane Street (which I must be excused for quoting
so continuously as I know it in great detail) is, I think, the leading
example of a road still remaining for the most part and clearly showing
how the later systems were built up upon a Roman backbone.
I will take the liberty of recapitulating here my argument, developed
at greater length in my monograph on this Way. The original motive of
the Stane Street was the connecting of the Chichester Harbours, and
indirectly of Portsmouth Harbour, with London by a road which should
overcome the difficulties of the Weald. The Weald is a mass of stiff
clay, impassable to general traffic for six months of the year unless
one uses artificial means. Left to itself it turns rapidly into a waste
of oak and thorn scrub: save in the dry months, there is no going over
it in its natural state for armies or bodies of wheeled vehicles. Its
watercourses are numerous, muddy, difficult of approach, and soft at
bottom. It produces nothing save in moments of high civilization, when
it can be heavily capitalized by draining and penetrated by expensive
artificial communications. The supply of good water is rare and
capricious. The Weald was, therefore, the great obstacle between the
south coast and the Thames. Because it was such an obstacle the Romans
drove their first great road from the main harbour of Portsmouth to
the capital round westward by Winchester, Silchester, and Staines; but
they needed a supplementary road, for two reasons. First, they wanted a
short cut to serve Portsmouth and the lesser inlets collectively called
Chichester Harbours (Bosham appears to have been an official port
throughout the Dark Ages); and, secondly, they wanted to be able to
reach quickly for purposes of travel and commerce the very fertile sea
plain of which Chichester is the capital. Therefore did they construct
the most purely military and most direct of all the Roman roads in the
island, the Stane Street. It ran from the east gate of Chichester in
a direct line to the crossing of the Arun at Pulborough, with a camp
at the end of this first day’s march to defend it; thence it made in
another great straight limb for the shoulder of Leith Hill, with a camp
at the second crossing of the upper Arun at Romans Wood; thence by a
series of much shorter limbs to the third camp at Dorking; thence over
the Mole at Burford Bridge and over the Epsom Downs past the racecourse
to the fourth camp at Merton, and thence to London Bridge--a five-march
stage.
In the Dark Ages the Weald became impassable again, the causeway on the
Arun marshes broke down and was swallowed up. The bridge at Alfoldean
broke down, and Sussex was isolated from the north.
Further, with the absence of any exit for direct and rapid
communication between Chichester and London the meaning went out of the
road between Dorking and Merton. Merton was close enough to London to
give the road vitality again, and between this and London it was never
lost. It runs to this day, and is the main line of tramways upon which
people still travel from Streatham and Balham to the Borough. It is
only deflected at the end by the intricacies of the Southwark streets.
Now, if you look at the present scheme of roads surrounding this
original Roman core they look at first as though they had no connection
with it, but when you examine them in detail the way in which they grew
up out of the Roman road is clear. Every deflection can be accounted
for, and the development of the local systems from the original
continuous backbone becomes evident.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch XI]
First you have all Sussex south of Pulborough Marsh, and again south of
Alfoldean Bridge, isolated.
What happens?
There remained no reason for using the Stane Street as a continuous
line. It now led nowhere. When it meets with its first great obstacle
going north, the woods near Eartham, it makes for the next centre of
population--Petworth, where there was a fortified post going back to
some very early time. The wood deflects the road towards Duncton Hill
(I have quoted this example in my section on vegetation in the earlier
part of this essay). Beyond Petworth it had little function, so this
first ten miles of the Stane Street becomes the parent of the local
Chichester-Petworth road which grew up out of it, leaving a gap where
the woods intervened. Next you must note the local roads beyond this
gap. Pulborough Bridge probably survived, but the causeway could not
be kept up, or was ill kept up. In its original line, when it served
the camp at Hardham, it ran over a wide part of the marsh. In the Dark
Ages men picked their way over the narrowest part of the marsh and then
followed the hard bank above the Arun-flooded levels, linking up the
villages as far as Bignor. But there the use of the road ended. The
“potential” was from Pulborough to the nearest seaport, which was then
Arundel. And all that the Roman road did in this section was to throw
out this bow or curve of lateral road eastward between Pulborough and
Bignor, the line of main local travel being diverted from Bury over
Arundel Hill and so seaward.
In the section north of Pulborough the Roman road still served a few
scattered homesteads in the Dark Ages up to Billingshurst at least, but
again it led nowhere because the bridge at Romans Wood was broken down
and the high weald beyond was a mass of scrub growing on stiff clay.
The road petered out and began again with harder going near Ockley.
But it was not used over the shoulder of Leith Hill, because that
trace subserved no local use and yet compelled the traveller to steep
gradients. Travel was deflected round the base of the hills to Dorking,
linking up the more populated part where the water springs were. This
new trace, growing up obviously out of the Roman road, opens up to the
eastward for a mile or two of the way until it joins up in the heart
of Dorking itself, where the third camp was, out of which the town of
Dorking has grown, and where in the churchyard the Roman road can still
be traced passing through. From Dorking onwards one might have imagined
that it would have survived all the way to London. Why did it not do so?
It was a matter of gradients and of centres of population. In the
Dark Ages, when there was little necessity for making a direct line
between Dorking and London--no continual marching of great Roman
forces, no conveying of orders from a centralized government--men took
the easier way. They abandoned the up-and-down of the spur of land
lying immediately north of Dorking and went round by its base to save
the trouble of the little climb. They used the Roman bridge (which
apparently survived at Burford), but the very steep leap up on to the
Epsom Downs they abandoned, especially as the further progress of the
road over the chalk connected no centres of population. The way curled
round by Michelham and Leatherhead and came round to Epsom--all places
suitable for centres of population with low water levels and no heavy
gradients in between. The Roman road on the high waterless chalk above
was left abandoned.
What happened between Epsom and Merton has been already described.
There is only one divergence in this section, which is where the
road of the Dark Ages deflected somewhat to the left and was used
to avoid the low wet ground below Clapham Common. For the rest it
maintained its use.
[Illustration: ERMINE STREET NEAR ROYSTON]
(3) The best example I know, as I have said, of a Roman road the
evidences of which have nearly disappeared, but round which local roads
have grown and which can still be identified as the core of these, is
the short cut between Penkridge and Chester. It is very puzzling why
the Roman road should here have disappeared. It is perhaps best to be
explained by the continual fighting between the Eastern and the Western
troops, which must have ravaged all that country between the first of
the raids and the full conversion of England to civilization and the
Christian religion which was the work of the seventh century.
But, whatever the cause or circumstances, the phenomenon is quite
plain. The local roads developed for purely local purposes on either
side of the original Roman line, and that line, since there is no
longer required any continuous traffic along it, disappears.
vi
(4) Lastly, we have the Peddars Way. It has presented a very difficult
problem to all historians, but I think a solution is to be guessed
at, though not to be too strongly affirmed. The Peddars Way runs as a
main artery right through Suffolk and Norfolk. Its origin was clearly
Stratford St. Mary’s, on the southern edge of Suffolk, and it was built
to link up that water crossing with some harbour now disappeared on the
Wash. Its use has dropped out; local roads are only concerned with it
in a short section, and men argue thus: why was it ever made, and, if
made, why did it fail as a means of communication? I think the answer
is military. The Peddars Way never linked up any centres of population.
It goes through land where men have never built cities or even large
villages. But what it would do as a military road, what I think it was
designed to do, was the holding of all that solid block of East Anglia
which apparently exactly corresponds with the territory of the Iceni.
For we must remember, as I have said above, that our county system
is probably Roman in origin, and most of it corresponds to tribal
divisions earlier even than the Roman administration. It is a point
that has often been denied, but those who deny it fail to remark the
analogy of the Continent, the evidence of Kent, Sussex, Dorsetshire,
and Essex, apart from the striking list of that mass of counties
which all centre round a Roman town or a town grown up as the suburb
of a Roman town--Leicestershire, Worcestershire, Huntingdonshire,
Gloucestershire, etc.
The Peddars Way cuts right across East Anglia through its very centre,
so that a chain of stations along it commands the whole territory. It
further divides that territory into two--a territory which was the
scene of a great revolt in the beginning of the Roman occupation. It
continued to subserve a certain function to the very end, because from
it as a base one can radiate to threatened points upon the coast when
the pirate raids began in the middle of the Roman occupation.
When, in the Dark Ages, the whole island fell into districts, fighting
one against the other, each with its local king, the whole a chaos and
a welter, the Peddars Way entirely lost its meaning and value. There
was no longer one government or one army. There was no need for the
controlling of a subject populace, for the populace had ceased to be
subject save to its local chiefs. Such few men as still came over the
North Sea were not, until the Danish invasion, enemies, and as the
Peddars Way served no line of villages or of towns it fell completely
out of use.
There is one very curious puzzle about this famous road, and which has
never been settled, and to which I offer no more than an attempt at
solution. We are fairly certain that one of the great Roman stations
for the repelling of raids lay at Brancaster, upon the Wash. Yet
the Peddars Way does not make for Brancaster, but for a point about
four miles to the east along the coast. Why is this? There has been
suggested a ferry across the Wash, but that hypothesis cannot be
entertained. The distance is one of eleven miles over very difficult
water, and leading to no important district. We have, I think, the key
to the position in the presence of a harbour which has been destroyed
by erosion. All that coast has been modified perpetually during the
last two thousand years through the vagaries of the sea. Of the great
harbours of the Middle Ages, Dunwich to the south has disappeared,
Orford is blocked and is decayed. Yarmouth, on the other hand, has
grown up from a shingle bank into a town, and Breydon Water has changed
from an estuary into a land-locked broad. I cannot doubt that there
was some harbour at the end of the Peddars Way which the sea has
destroyed. Brancaster, the military post, was established near it, but
not actually within its confines, for some local reason, the character
of which we have now lost. We must remember that Brancaster is a late
fortification and the Peddars Way was settled before Brancaster came
into being.
vii
We must imagine this process of gradual local development continuing
uninterruptedly throughout the Dark Ages, the Roman roads serving local
purposes gradually ceasing to have continuous use save for the Fosse
Way, the Watling Street, and one or two of the other greater roads: the
local ways, very ill maintained, growing up out of the Roman system.
When the Dark Ages came to an end, and when the mediaeval civilization
succeeded it--that is, in the five great centuries between the Conquest
and the Reformation--this new system of local ways was hardened and
became the national system which we still inherit.
When I say the mediaeval system I mean the system which must have
had its origin, or, at any rate, its mainspring, in the twelfth
century, and which substituted for the use of the decayed Roman roads
a competing system of roads no longer identical with them, though
originally based upon them as a framework.
Here again we have no direct records, but we have indirect evidence
sufficient for our purpose. The twelfth century was the moment when
civilization was arising again everywhere throughout the west, and
nowhere more strongly than Britain. That was true of the architecture
and town life and education, and of letters, and, we may justly
presume, of the road system as well.
Again, from that date onwards you begin to get sites unconnected with
the old Roman road system, and their number increases rapidly as the
Middle Ages advance. Again, we learn from any amount of evidence the
comparative rapidity of travel after the Dark Ages, and that even over
roads which certainly were not Roman. We can trace it in the marching
of armies, the transport of grain and other provisions, and the travel
of individuals.
We may take almost any district in England and discover for ourselves
by a little study how the mediaeval road system, which continued to
develop until the change in its use by the turnpike, grew up out of the
Roman Road, and we can thus show how the Roman road system is at the
foundation of all our English ways.
There was no regular plan or order in all this. Local usage, local
necessity developed the tortuous network, and has left its stamp upon
the face of England.