![]() Wheel ruts and traffic-worn surfaces were identified at different levels and were interpreted as successive repairs and reconstructions over the life of the road, indicating heavy use over a protracted period. In places, the modern road deviates briefly from the Fosse and at Clandown in the 1990s the Bath Archaeological Trust excavated a section, finding a complex vertical sequence of no less than 13 layers. South of Bath, a modern A road follows the Fosse line, suggesting continuous use since Roman times. Perhaps it was only conceived as temporary overall average depth of metalling is less than the average of all Roman Britain roads and at 5.3m wide, it is the narrowest of all major roads (half the average of Watling Street). When II advanced to Caerleon in South Wales and IX to York, its importance declined. Hugh Davies suggests it was a link between IX Hispana Legion in Lincoln and the II Augusta Legion in Exeter on the two flanks of the Roman advance. N eil Holbrook (Cotswold Archaeology ) says military sites are not being found here and that the Dobunni were not intensively garrisoned. A large portion of the Fosse way passes the Dobunni tribe who seem no threat. A road like this could take several years to build, would eat up resources and would soon be redundant as Roman military activity is evident around Wroxeter by AD47 only four years after the invasion. It looks purposeful and many regard it as an early frontier of the new province. It covers a distance of over about 200 miles. Its directness from the Devon/Dorset border via Bath, Cirencester, Leicester to Lincoln is remarkable if a straight line is ruled on a map between the endpoints, then at no point does the road deviate more than 6 miles from that line. When excavated by McMurtrie in 1906, a simple construction emerged – cambered top surface about 7 inches depth of red sandstone pebbles mixed with fine stone and earth next, 4 to 7 inches of black earth or clay at the bottom, yellow clay natural. Near the Miners` Arms on Mendip, the agger is visible. This new tool, available free from the Government website, has revolutionised finding new Roman roads and disproving some assumed ones. The line has now been revealed by LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), a kind of radar scan from the air that can remove vegetation from images, but clearly shows the shape of the landscape and its anomalies. The first stretch of the road simply shows dots on the Ordnance Survey map indicating the presumed line, since there is no surface evidence from continuous hedgerows, modern roads or tracks, or a visible agger (Latin for embankment/rampart). Pigs are often inscribed the earliest found is dated to AD49 showing the mines working only six years after the invasion. ![]() Lead pigs from Charterhouse have been found along this route including the port further examples have been found in France and a utensil found at Pompeii. The Romans invading Britannia had nearly four centuries of road building experience behind them.Ī Roman road starting from the lead mines at Charterhouse, led to Roman Winchester and on to a port at Bitterne (now inSouthampton). Gradients were eased by cuttings, viaducts, embankments and terraces. By the time of Claudius’ invasion of Britain in AD43, a dense network of well-engineered, all-weather roads covered Italy and the more Romanised areas of the Empire. The first recorded Roman road was started, according to Livy’s History of Rome, in 312 BC. Fragments of a huge map of the city of Rome at a scale of 240:1 survives and fragments of a public stone land registry from Orange in France ( Roman Arausio) showing roads and a river whose representation can fit a modern map. ![]() Some suggestive scraps of evidence survive, such as Frontinus ( `de Aquis urbis Romae`, written as Curator of Rome’s aqueducts, before later becoming Governor of Britannia) states, “I also took care to make maps… I could discuss the situation as if I was on the spot”. Hugh Davies ( Roads in Roman Britain) suggests that route surveys included large scale mapping, although no evidence exists. For example starting from the Devon/Dorset border, how did Roman engineers know in which direction to point the Fosse Way to arrive at Lincoln, nearly 200 miles away. The question posed was, how to ensure directness overall for the whole route of the road. Straightness of Roman roads is their defining characteristic and has spawned many ideas about how it was achieved.
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