the interior was held by a system of roads and forts not yet well understood but discernible at such points as Caer-gai on Bala Lake, Castle Collen near Llandrindod Wells, the Gaer near Brecon, Merthyr and Gellygaer. In the north of Britain we find three principal roads. One led due north from York past forts at Catterick Bridge, Piers Bridge, Binchester, Lanchester, Ebchester to the wall and to Scotland, while branches through Chester-le-Street reached the Tyne Bridge (Pons Aelius) at Newcastle and the Tyne mouth at South Shields. A second road, turning north-west from Catterick Bridge, mounted the Pennine Chain by way of forts at Rokeby, Bowes and Brough-under-Stainmoor, descended into the Eden valley, reached Hadrian’s wall near Carlisle (Luguvallium), and passed on to Birrens. The third route, starting from Chester and passing up the western coast, is more complex, and exists in duplicate, the result perhaps of two different schemes of road-making. Forts in plenty can be detected along it, notably Manchester (Mancunium or Mamucium), Ribchester (Bremetennacum), Brougham Castle (Brocavum), Old Penrith (Voreda), and on a western branch, Watercrook near Kendal, Waterhead near the hotel of that name on Ambleside, Hardknott above Eskdale, Maryport (Uxellodūnum), and Old Carlisle (possibly Petriana). In addition, two or three cross roads, not yet sufficiently explored, maintained communication between the troops in Yorkshire and those in Cheshire and Lancashire. This road system bears plain marks of having been made at different times, and with different objectives, but we have no evidence that any one part was abandoned when any other was built. There are signs, however, that various forts were dismantled as the country grew quieter. Thus, Gellygaer in South Wales and Hardknott in Cumberland have yielded nothing later than the opening of the 2nd century.
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| From Social England, by permission of Cassell & Co., Ltd. |
| Fig. 2.—Hadrian’s Wall. |
Besides these detached forts and their connecting roads, the north of Britain was defended by Hadrian’s wall (figs. 2 and 3). The history of this wall has been given above. The actual works are threefold. First, there is that which to-day forms the most striking feature in the whole, the wall of stone 6–8 ft. thick, and originally perhaps 14 ft. high, with a deep ditch in front, and forts and “mile castles” and turrets and a connecting road behind it. On the high moors between Chollerford and Gilsland its traces are still plain, as it climbs from hill to hill and winds along perilous precipices. Secondly, there is the so-called “Vallum,” in reality no vallum at all, but a broad flat-bottomed ditch out of which the earth has been cast up on either side into regular and continuous mounds that resemble ramparts. Thirdly, nowhere very clear on the surface and as yet detected only at a few points, there are the remains of the “turf wall,” constructed of sods laid in regular courses, with a ditch in front. This turf wall is certainly older than the stone wall, and, as our ancient writers mention two wall-builders, Hadrian and Septimius Severus, the natural inference is that Hadrian built his wall of turf and Severus reconstructed it in stone. The reconstruction probably followed in general the line of Hadrian’s wall in order to utilize the existing ditch, and this explains why the turf wall itself survives only at special points. In general it was destroyed to make way for the new wall in stone. Occasionally (as at Birdoswald) there was a deviation, and the older work survived. This conversion of earthwork into stone in the age of Severus can be paralleled from other parts of the Roman empire.
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| Fig. 3.—Section of Hadrian’s Wall. |
The meaning of the vallum is much more doubtful. John Hodgson and Bruce, the local authorities of the 19th century, supposed that it was erected to defend the wall from southern insurgents. Others have ascribed it to Agricola, or have thought it to be the wall of Hadrian, or even assigned it to pre-Roman natives. The two facts that are clear about it are, that it is a Roman work, no older than Hadrian (if so old), and that it was not intended, like the wall, for military defence. Probably it is contemporaneous with either the turf wall or the stone wall, and marked some limit of the civil province of Britain. Beyond this we cannot at present go.
III. The Civilization of Roman Britain.—Behind these formidable garrisons, sheltered from barbarians and in easy contact with the Roman empire, stretched the lowlands of southern and eastern Britain. Here a civilized life grew up, and Roman culture spread. This part of Britain became Romanized. In the lands looking on to the Thames estuary (Kent, Essex, Middlesex) the process had perhaps begun before the Roman conquest. It was continued after that event, and in two ways. To some extent it was definitely encouraged by the Roman government, which here, as elsewhere, founded towns peopled with Roman citizens—generally discharged legionaries—and endowed them with franchise and constitution like those of the Italian municipalities. It developed still more by its own automatic growth. The coherent civilization of the Romans was accepted by the Britons, as it was by the Gauls, with something like enthusiasm. Encouraged perhaps by sympathetic Romans, spurred on still more by their own instincts, and led no doubt by their nobles, they began to speak Latin, to use the material resources of Roman civilized life, and in time to consider themselves not the unwilling subjects of a foreign empire, but the British members of the Roman state. The steps by which these results were reached can to some extent be dated. Within a few years of the Claudian invasion a colonia, or municipality of time-expired soldiers, had been planted in the old native capital of Colchester (Camulodūnum), and though it served at first mainly as a fortress and thus provoked British hatred, it came soon to exercise a civilizing influence. At the same time the British town of Verulamium (St Albans) was thought sufficiently Romanized to deserve the municipal status of a municipium, which at this period differed little from that of a colonia. Romanized Britons must now have begun to be numerous. In the great revolt of Boadicea (60) the nationalist party seem to have massacred many thousands of them along with actual Romans. Fifteen or twenty years later, the movement increases. Towns spring up, such as Silchester, laid out in Roman fashion, furnished with public buildings of Roman type, and filled with houses which are Roman in fittings if not in plan. The baths of Bath (Aquae Sulis) are exploited. Another colonia is planted at Lincoln (Lindum), and a third at Gloucester (Glevum) in 96. A new “chief judge” is appointed for increasing civil business. The tax-gatherer and recruiting officer begin to make their way into the hills. During the 2nd century progress was perhaps slower, hindered doubtless by the repeated risings in the north. It was not till the 3rd century that country houses and farms became common in most parts of the civilized area. In the beginning of the
