ROMANO-BRITISH WORCESTERSHIRE north-east. To these must be added a long single road, the only im- portant one which had no connection with London. This is the Foss, which cuts obliquely across the island from north-east to south-west, joining Lincoln, Leicester, Bath and Exeter. These roads must be understood as being only the main roads, divested for the sake of clear- ness of many branches and intricacies ; and understood as such they may be taken to represent a reasonable supply of internal communications for the province. After the Roman occupation had ceased, they were largely utilized by the English, but they do not resemble the roads of medieval England in their grouping and economic significance. One might rather compare them to the railways of to-day, which radiate similarly from London. In Worcestershire we shall be concerned princi- pally with branches and routes of lesser importance, but the preceding sketch seemed desirable in order to fit these lesser routes into their proper places. Such in the main was that large part of Roman Britain in which ordinary non-military civilized life prevailed. To that part Worcester- shire belongs, and when we pass on to survey in detail the Roman remains discovered in the county, we might expect to meet the features which we have sketched in the preceding paragraphs. To a certain extent our expectation will not be disappointed. There undoubtedly existed in Worcestershire a Romano-British civilization of the normal type, with town and villa and road. But though normal in type, that civiUzation was by no means normal in amount. Towns and villas and roads were very scarce ; industries were wholly or almost wholly absent, and in general the remains with which we have to deal are few and comparatively unimportant. Much of the county was doubtless forest ; much must have needed draining, and the whole valley of the Severn from Bewdley to Tewkesbury contained probably a small population. It is not merely that Worcestershire possesses fewer Roman remains than its southern neighbour of Gloucester, with its two great towns and its crowd of villas large and small, and its numerous and important roads : even Herefordshire in this respect excels Worcestershire. Some allow- ance must perhaps be made for the absence of exploration, for Worcester- shire is almost unique among the English counties in this, that no single Roman remain within its borders has ever been excavated of set purpose. But even so we must admit that the county is to be classed as one of the thinner spaces (if we may use the phrase) in Roman Britain. 2. Places of Settled Occupation : Worcester. Worcestershire, so far as it is at present known to us, contains no site which can be described as being demonstrably the site of a large Romano-British town. It has no Gloucester or Cirencester. But the various remains found at Worcester, though they include no definite traces of houses or other buildings, may nevertheless be accepted as evidence of some little town or settlement. 203
