Workington.
[Our correspondent's Query is an interesting one; but he does not seem
to be aware that in our First Vol., p. 139., Mr. E. SMIRKE had given
the names of three "bondmen of bloude" living near Brighton in 1617.]
_Roman Roads near London._--In the most ancient maps of Middlesex that I
have seen, there are no roads marked out. In a folio coloured map of
Middlesex, published by Bowen (the date of which is, I think, 1709,
although the same map has various dates, like those of Speed, where the
date only is altered several times), the roads are introduced. A Roman road
appears from the corner of the Tottenham Court Road, where the Hampstead
Road and the New Road now meet, running through what must now be the
Regent's Park, until it reaches Edgeware, and thence to Brockley Hills,
called Sulloniacae, an ancient city in Antonine's _Itinerary_. The lanes
marking this road are so different from the other roads, as to show at once
what is intended; and yet, either in this same map or in another with the
same route, Watling Street is printed upon the highway that leads to Tyburn
Turnpike, in a manner to show the whole of that distance is meant. The
Roman road from Tottenham Court, after making its appearance in a variety
of other maps up to a certain date, about 1780, is nowhere to be found
since, in any of the Middlesex maps. Can any of your readers show by what
authority this was first introduced, and why discontinued; and if the
Watling Street branched off, upon its approach to London, where did the
part crossing Oxford Street at Tyburn lead to?