WINTER. NORWICH TO LONDON BY ROMAN ROAD
Crooked streets of Norwich--An appropriate epitaph--To
the county surveyor of Norfolk many thanks--The London
Road (Roman)--Roman roads in East Anglia--Mr.
Haverfield, the greatest authority on--Some history
necessary to understand paucity of Roman remains in
East Anglia--The country of the Iceni--Rebellion, brief
triumph, and defeat of Iceni under Boadicea--The Iceni
wiped out--Their territory minor part of an unimportant
province--No military stations--Frontier far to the
north--Caistor-by-Norwich not a Roman fortress--Roman
roads of East Anglia enumerated--_En route_--Tempting
declivities and annoying cross-roads--Long
Stratton--The first round flint
tower--Explanation--Scole and county boundary--The
"White Hart"--Worse roads in Suffolk--A church with
good parvise--Difficulty of identifying
villages--Ipswich to Colchester and London--Towns and
scenery of route postponed--Reasons--Puzzling
darkness--Familiar villages not recognized--Futile
demand for tea--Romford discovered--Lights to left
front--Had we lost our way?--"Stratford Empire" a sign
of hope--Ichthyophagous Whitechapel--Skill in
traffic--Journey ended--Observations on winter
motoring--On general character of East Anglian scenery.
Norwich was left behind in mingled sorrow and regret the next morning, for,
on the one hand, it seemed a sin to leave so fascinating a city practically
unexplored, and, on the other, frost had given place to rain, and the rain
having abated, the air was mild and warm, so that motoring promised to be
entirely pleasant. However, other visits to Norwich were a certainty in the
future, so off we went gaily. But, Lord!--to copy Mr. Pepys--were ever
streets so strait or so prodigal of angles as these where some folk were
hastening to their business at the assizes, while others, on cars garlanded
with significant ribbons, were clearly bound for election work in
Mid-Norfolk, where it was the polling day. Of a surety a pilot was needed,
and we had one; undoubtedly, although Tilney All Saints is far away in
Marshland, the epitaph appearing there, and here quoted, must have been
written by a Norwich man, and by no other.
This world's a city, full of crooked streets,
Death is the market-place where all men meet;
If life was merchandise, then men could buy,
Rich men would always live, and poor men die.
So hey for Ipswich and London, for at last we are on a straight road, which
hardly curves before Ipswich is reached. The air seems soft and balmy after
the frost of the day before, and, crowning blessing of all, the surface is
good and even. This fact completed and rounded off by plainly legible
milestones, seeming to follow one another at intervals satisfactorily
short, induce us to pass an informal vote of thanks to the county surveyor
of Norfolk, and the heaps of repairing material at regular intervals along
the roadside call for observation on more than one ground. They are
alternate heaps of blue stone, granite probably, broken into commendably
small pieces, and of some whitish matter, probably chalk, doubtless used
for binding. This may not be ideal road-making--in fact, it is not, for the
smaller the stones are broken, and the less the use of any kind of binding
material, the better the road will be in all weathers--but it must be
admitted that this road was remarkably good on a morning when fairly heavy
rain--it turned out that there had been much more of it further south--had
followed shrewdly sharp frost.
For the good surface we had to thank modern times; for a straightness of
direction, having the double advantage of saving labour and sometimes
rendering a really exhilarating speed prudent, we had to thank the Roman
invasion of Britain. It was the first time on this tour when passage
through the air gave one that almost undefinable feeling of thrusting
through liquid and cool purity--for cold is horrid but coolness is
bliss--which is one of the chief pleasures of automobilism. It was also,
after we had passed Caistor-by-Norwich, the first time we had been on a
road that was once undoubtedly Roman.
Here, since in the course of our wanderings we shall be upon Roman roads
fairly often, and upon reputed Roman roads much more often, I am going to
take the bull frankly by the horns and to dispose at once of a problem
which, taken in detail, might be tedious. Nor shall any apology be offered
for saying here once and for all, on the authority of Mr. Haverfield,
almost all that needs to be said concerning the Roman occupation of East
Anglia and of its Roman roads in the course of this volume. The digression
shall be made as brief as may be. It can, of course, be omitted by those
who know the subject and by those who do not desire to learn. Both will
have the consolation of knowing that there is next to nothing of the same
kind afterwards. Those who do desire to learn may be informed of that which
is a commonplace to everybody who has given any attention to the story of
the Romans in Britain, that Mr. Haverfield knows all that is ascertainable
on the subject, and at least as much as any other living man. As for the
dead, none of them, since the fifth century at any rate, have had the
chances we have of ascertaining the truth, although posterity may learn
more, for our sources of knowledge will be available for it, and there is,
or may be, a vast amount of information to be obtained still by the
intelligent use of the homely spade. The antiquary, no less than the
politician, appeals for spade work, especially in East Anglia.
One or two principal facts must be borne in mind. County divisions are, of
course, long Post-Roman; they have no meaning in relation to Roman Britain,
which was simply a remote and not very important province of the Empire. By
the end of the year A.D. 46 the Romans had overrun the south and the
Midlands of England, annexing part entirely, leaving the rest to
"protected" native princes. Such were the princes of the Iceni, who
occupied Norfolk, most of Suffolk, and part of Cambridgeshire, and, for
inter-tribal reasons, took the side of the conquerors at the outset. The
Iceni rebelled twice. The first effort was puny; they were defeated, and
they returned to their native princes. Then, in A.D. 61, came the affair of
Boudicca, better known as Boadicea, "the British warrior queen," and so
forth. It is quite an interesting little story, of which our poetic
dramatists might easily have made use, and it is told shortly because,
judging from personal experience, the details may not be generally
familiar. Besides they are essential to an understanding of East Anglia as
a field for the "prospector," so to speak, on the look-out for Roman
"finds," and to know of how little account East Anglia was under the Romans
is to understand the more easily why many so-called Roman remains are
really not Roman at all.
The Icenian "Prince Prasutagus, dying, had bequeathed his private wealth to
his two daughters and the Emperor Nero. Such was the fashion of the
time--to satiate a greedy Emperor with a heavy legacy lest he should
confiscate the whole fortune. Prasutagus hoped thus to save his kingdom for
his family as well as a part of his private wealth. He did not succeed: the
Roman Government stepped in and annexed his kingdom, while its officials
emphasized the loss of freedom by acts of avarice, bad faith, and brutality
against Boudicca (Boadicea), the widow of Prasutagus, her daughters, and
the Icenian nobles." All this happened when the Roman Governor was away
fighting in North Wales, and his absence enabled the rebellion, which
Boadicea immediately headed, to gain temporary and very substantial
success. Her Icenian warriors destroyed a whole Roman army, three Roman
towns, and seventy thousand lives. Then Suetonius came with his trained
legionaries; a single great battle destroyed the Icenian power for ever,
and their whole country was laid waste. We hear no more of the Iceni in
history. Their sometime territory, of little agricultural value in those
days, simply became a part of the province, thinly populated, having a few
country towns and villas, centres of large estates. In it we have no reason
to look for traces of large military stations of early Roman date for, as
we have seen, the Iceni were wiped out of existence in A.D. 61; and, after
Hadrian built his wall from Carlisle to Newcastle in A.D. 124, the
frontier, on which Rome always kept her soldiery, was never to the south of
that wall. Some military stations there are of later date, fourth century,
which were erected for the specific purpose of beating off the Saxon
pirates (hence, and hence only, the phrase "the Saxon Shore") who began to
raid the southern and eastern coasts of England, running up the rivers in
their vessels of shallow draft. Such were Brancaster, guarding the mouth of
the Wash, and Burgh Castle defending the outlets of the Waveney and the
Yare, and with them we shall deal later, in their place.
As for the roads they all radiated from London, as indeed they do still in
large measure. One passed direct from London to Colchester and thence, via
Stratford St. Mary and Long Stratton and Scole, to Caistor-by-Norwich. Such
names as Stratford and Stratton, unless shown to be of modern origin, are
strong evidence of Roman occupation, and at Scole, where the road crosses
the Waveney and enters Norfolk, have been found some Roman remains and,
perhaps, traces of a paved ford. That is the road on which we are now
travelling. Caistor-by-Norwich, where we should not have seen much if we
had halted--that is the worst of these Roman remains--is in all human
probability _Venta Icenorum_, concerning the situation of which debate used
to be carried on vehemently. What we might have seen is a rectangular
enclosure of earthen mounds covering massive walls, having bonding tiles
and flint facing to a concrete core, the walls themselves being visible on
the north and west, and a great fosse surrounding the whole. Its area is
about thirty-four acres, and there were towers at each corner. A careful
analysis of the evidence leads to the sure conclusion that this was a small
country town and not a great military fortress.
This particular road crossed the Ipswich river a few miles to the
north-west of Ipswich, and a branch from it ran by way of Goodenham to
Peasenhall. Thence it can be traced due east to Yoxford, where it ends, so
far as our certain knowledge goes. From Peasenhall another direct road can
be traced as far as the Waveney, near Weybread, and no further. Other roads
there are of uncertain Roman origin, but the most important of them was the
Peddar's (or Pedlar's) Way, which can be traced with certainty from
Barningham, in Suffolk, to Fring, about seven miles from Brancaster, and
perhaps even to Holme, which is nearer, and is, indeed, one of the supports
for the theory concerning the nature and origin of Brancaster, but the
modern roads seldom follow its course. A Roman road was supposed to run
from Caistor via Downham Market, and across the Cambridgeshire Fens to
Peterborough, but its existence is hardly proved in Norfolk, and its origin
is hardly clear to demonstration in Cambridgeshire. These are all the Roman
roads which need concern us, and the references to Roman roads in
guide-books and on Ordnance and other maps may be disregarded. This is
written not at all by way of disparaging the ordinary guide-books, some of
which are monuments of learning and industry, and by no means in any mood
of conscious superiority. There is no credit at all in knowing that which
Mr. Haverfield has made easy, and, until he co-ordinated the facts and
sifted the evidence, it was practically impossible for anybody but a
specialist to know the truth. He is a specialist of the true scientific
temperament, eager to acquire knowledge, cautious in inference, and it is
to be feared that he and his like knock a good deal of romance out of
travel in England. What they leave, however, is real; and it is worth
stating once and for all.
At any rate, we were on a Roman road with a sound British surface on this
genial January day, for genial it was by contrast with those which had gone
before; and we sped along gaily, regretting not so much that a great deal
of Norfolk is hilly, as that when there came a tempting downhill stretch
there was generally a village or a cross-road at the bottom to counteract
the temptation. Such were the circumstances as we passed down into Long
Stratton, where our eyes were delighted by the first specimen on the
roadside of the round church towers of flint for which East Anglia is
famous. Many theories there have been as to the origin of this peculiar
form of tower, but the best of them, because the most obvious and simple,
is that of Mr. J. H. Parker: "They are built round to suit the material,
and to save the expense of stone quoins for the corners, which are
necessary for square towers, and which often may not have been easy to
procure in districts where building stone has all to be imported." Now we
bade leave to hills for a while, and at Dickleburgh the floods were out in
some force. Scole came next, a pleasing many-gabled village with a fair
share of Scotch firs, and once a great coaching centre. It also contains
the White Hart Inn, of which Mr. Rye writes: "Of course the best known inn
in the county was that at Scole, built by James Peck, a Norwich merchant,
in 1655, the sign costing L1057, and being ornamented with twenty-five
strange figures and devices, one of which was a movable one of an
astronomer pointing to the quarter whence the rain was expected. There was
also an enormous reproduction of the great 'bed of Ware,' which held thirty
or forty people. The inn itself is a fine red-brick building, with walls
twenty-seven inches thick, and with a good oak staircase." Scole, by the
way, is only just in the county of Norfolk, and there is room for doubt
whether the "White Hart" was ever so famous as the "Maid's Head" at
Norwich. Mr. Rye, however, is entitled to be modest in this matter, even if
modesty lead him into inaccuracy, for he saved the "Maid's Head" from being
modernized by buying it out and out and restoring it in perfect taste. May
the motor-car bring back prosperity to the "White Hart," and may the "White
Hart" merit it. It is well situated at the crossing of two trunk roads,
that on which we were travelling and the Bury and Yarmouth road. In our
case it was not convenient to halt.
Here we entered Suffolk, crossing the Waveney, and a country of road
surfaces far worse than those traversed up to that point. The rain had
apparently fallen more heavily than it had near Norwich; but it had not
rained gravel, an infamous material for roadmaking, nor could it account
for the weary attitude of the tumble-down and illegible milestones. As it
was, when hills were encountered the Panhard was hard tried, and the
driving wheels, although they wore antiskid gaiters, revolved many times
more than the distance covered by them warranted. There was simply no hold
for the wheels in the dirty, porridge-like mud, concealing a crumbling
sub-surface, and, now and again, although no great height above the sea had
to be climbed, the gradients were almost trying, owing to the bad surface.
Shocking bad roads, luncheon sadly deferred in consequence, and the
certainty of much travelling after dark if London were to be reached that
evening, may be accountable for the fact that, between Scole and Ipswich,
the only point that seemed worthy of a passing note was a church on the
left-hand side, I think at Yaxley, clearly visible from the road and having
a good parvise over the porch. It has been written, "I think at Yaxley," in
all honesty, for it is not always possible to identify on a map the village
through which the car is passing, nor always easy to consult the map even
when travelling at moderate speed. Blessed be the villages that proclaim
their titles, even by modest boards on the post-offices, as many do in East
Anglia; for by such boards is the traveller saved from the scorn poured
upon him who asks of the rustic the name of his native village. This is an
almost universal phenomenon, so frequent in occurrence that one is tempted
to speculate as to its origin; and that may be that the normal rustic,
painfully conscious of the narrow limits of his own knowledge, feels that
he has encountered a fool indeed when he meets anybody who is more ignorant
than himself, although it be but as to a single and quite trivial point.
The one important thing about luncheon at the "Great White Horse," thrice
welcome as it was to us, was the sad fact that it did not begin until three
o'clock. Of the places passed through between Ipswich and London, or of
their appearance and their story at any rate, little shall be said here for
two reasons, or even three. The first is that having once stayed at
Colchester for ten days and more, going out motoring every day, and
studying Colchester itself, full of interest, at many odd times, I deal
with Colchester and excursions from it in another chapter. The second is
that, after it grew dark, that is to say not long after we left Colchester
behind, our journey seemed to become exciting and mysterious in a degree
hardly conceivable, of which it is hoped to reproduce an impression; and
the third, last, and most cogent is that this chapter grows full long
already for the small portion of road of which it really treats. We passed
then to Colchester via Copdock, Capel St. Mary, and Stratford St.
Mary--here we entered Essex, and the name of the village reminded us again
of the antiquity of the road--and so passing, especially after Capel St.
Mary, we encountered some hills which would not have seemed despicable to a
weak car. Through Colchester, its outlines rendered picturesque by the
fading light, we hastened, setting our course for Chelmsford; but we were
hardly a mile outside Colchester before the lamps had to be lit, and the
darkness came down upon us like a curtain.
Now it was my turn to fail as a pilot and a guide. It has been said that I
had motored round Colchester every day for ten days at least, and that not
long before. I had, in fact, followed the Essex manoeuvres of 1904 in a
Lanchester on business, and had stayed on for pleasure afterwards; but on
that occasion, except in a futile effort to see a night attack on
Colchester during pitch darkness, there had never been occasion to use the
lamps, and it was astonishing to find how vast a difference the darkness
made. We halted at Kelvedon to procure water; we would have taken tea
there, at a roomy inn of old time, if the mere mention of tea had not
seemed to paralyse those who were in charge of the house. I had been
through Kelvedon at least a score of times before, yet I had to ask its
title. In Witham, the long and straggling congregation of houses three
miles beyond, I had been interrupted at luncheon in an inn by a sharp fight
between the armies of Sir John French and General Wynne; yet I could not
recognize the place at all in the gloom. Chelmsford revealed itself by
process of inference; there was no other considerable community to be
expected at this point, and Chelmsford it must be, and was. After this all
was fresh and mysterious. Ingatestone I had visited before, and passing
lovely some of its environment, which we shall see by daylight some day,
had been found to be. To Brentwood there had never been occasion to go, so
there was no shame in failing to recognize it. On we sped a dozen miles
which, what with feeling our way in the darkness and the impossibility of
calculating distance accomplished,--here was one of the cases in which a
recording instrument would have been useful,--seemed to be at least a
score. Surely we must be approaching the environs of London, for there was
a glow of light ahead, and there were railway lights to the left, and
beyond them more lights still. Not a bit of it; the lights ahead turned out
to be merely Romford; those on the left beforehand must have been
Hornchurch. Even Romford was at last detected only by virtue of a fortunate
glance at some public office. Again we were out in the open country, as it
seemed in the dark, although, no doubt, the rural illusion would have
vanished by daylight. After that in a short time lamps began to appear
regularly, but the mystery and ignorance of us who were travellers was not
less than before. The pride-destroying fact must be admitted that a glimpse
of Seven Kings Station only set me thinking of the two kings of Brentford,
with whom the "seven" can have no reasonable connection, that Ilford was
new to me save by name, and that I began half to think it possible that
(like the Turkish Admiral who, having been sent on a voyage to Malta, came
back to say that the island had disappeared) we might have missed our
course by many miles, and might be skirting London to the north.
Multitudinous lights stretching far away over the left front, aided the
illusion. Then came a reassuring advertisement, that of the "Stratford
Empire," a distinct presage of the East End of London, and before very long
on our left was a row of houses quite respectably old among many that were
horribly modern. The old houses were, at a guess, not earlier than Queen
Anne, but the mind went back further to reflect that Stratford had been
Stratford-atte-Bowe in Chaucer's time, and that there his prioress had
learned to speak French "ful faire and fetisly" at the Benedictine Nunnery.
To my friend, at any rate, the environment of the Mile End Road was
familiar, for he and his car had been busy electioneering there; as for me,
the pangs of hunger notwithstanding, I was fascinated by the deft way in
which he slipped through the traffic. Truly the motor-car is capable of
marvellous dirigibility in skilful hands. Eftsoons were we in Whitechapel,
breathing a murky atmosphere of naptha and fried fish, so all-pervading
that, at the moment, the very thought of food seemed nauseous. It is surely
one of the standing mysteries of creation where all this multitude of
fishes can have their origin. So, at precisely nine o'clock in the evening
we passed up Holborn out of the City of London, and, for the purposes of
this book, our subsequent proceedings were of no interest.
Let us, before closing the chapter, see what had been gained by this tour
in mid-winter. Well, first it was a conviction that, although motoring in
winter is a cold occupation, productive of some absolute pain, for it hurts
to be really cold, and of a compensating increase of appreciation for
familiar comforts, it is distinctly better than not motoring at all. This
conviction I should probably retain, in spite of a constitutional dislike
to cold, in all circumstances except those of heavy snow when falling,
which, I am content to believe, without trying it, is all but an absolute
bar to motoring. If you have a screen the snow destroys its transparency;
if you have not a screen it blocks your vision and covers up your eyes or
your goggles. Moreover, on high and fenceless roads, where the motorist is
most liable to be overtaken by snow, the white mantle obliterates the track
and renders movement full of perils. But something more substantial than
this conviction was gained during these three days. They were days, be it
remembered, when the face of Nature, in what may be called a tamed country,
is at its worst; they had been spent in traversing districts up to that
time, for the most part, unknown to me; but there remained much of East
Anglia, familiar to me in summer and in winter dress, which have been
purposely omitted in this effort to gain a general impression of the
country. I pictured to myself the breezy uplands of the Sandringham
district, the pines, the heather, and the bracken, as I had seen them many
a time in summer sunshine and in stormy winter; fancy filled the brown
ploughland we had passed a sea of yellow corn; I remembered the beautifully
umbrageous lanes and roads of Eastern Essex, where they rarely "shroud"
the elms in the barbarous fashion prevailing in Berkshire and other
counties; the strange crops, whole fields of dahlias for example, which I
had seen in the seed-growing districts; the heavy-laden orchards upon
which, it must be admitted, Mr. Thomas Atkins levied heavy toll in 1904. So
remembering I concluded, there and then, that I should find ample
satisfaction in my task. But at that time I had not seen a tithe of the
characteristic scenery of East Anglia. Ely, rising majestic from the plain;
the very singular and impressive run along the sandy coast from Cromer to
Wells-next-Sea; the road on thence to Hunstanton and Lynn; the glorious
expanses of heath in many parts of Norfolk and Suffolk; the extraordinary
hedges of fir along the roadside near Elvedon and in many another
place--all these things, and a score besides--were as a sealed book to me.
The book has been opened now, and its prodigal variety of infinite charm
appals me, even though a substantial part of my pleasant duty has been
accomplished.