170 



case in the present instance. Most of the imncipal Roman rbads in tliis country, 

 at least all the military ways, are pretty well defined in the Itinerary of 

 Antoninus, and although the authors cf the Iters are unknown, stiU the records 

 have been transmitted and are acknowledged as traditional evidence. 



Now in the Itinerary there is no record of any road connecting the 

 stations of Bravinium and Circutio, or of any road such as Mr. Edmunds has 

 described in his paper, connecting Ludlow and the northward with the Portway 

 wliich led from Magna to Circiitio. The probabilities are unfavoiu-able to Mr. 

 Edmunds's theory ; there being no necessity for such a route, because there 

 was the well-known military way — the 12th Iter of Antoninus, the Via Orientalis 

 of Sir B. E. Hoare — running almost parallel with it, at a few miles westward — 

 upon which Magna and Br.avinium were situate ; .and which connected Venta 

 Siluri\m (at Caerwent) and Isca Silurum (at Caerlleon) with Burrium (at Usk), 

 Gobannium (at Abergavenny) Magna and Bravinium, as already noticed, and 

 ended at Uriconium, near Shrewsbury. 



It is very improbable too that a Roman road led to Liidlow where there 

 was no Roman station of which we have any historical record. 



The eminent antiquary, Sir R. C. Hoare, in his "Map of Antient Wales," 

 before and after the invasion of the Romans, does not Include the road in ques- 

 tion, but only those three portways which communicated from Magna with 

 Bravinium, Ariconium, and Wigornia (at "Worcester) respectively. The small 

 station of Circutio is also unnoticed in his "Cambria Romana," which shows 

 that it was not a place of much note, and therefore not likely to have such 

 frequent intercourse with an inferior station like Bravinium as to have caused 

 the construction of a regular military road. We must, therefore, not be sur- 

 prised that the trackway is now difficiilt of identity, and in many places 

 physically lost from local circumstances. 



It must not be forgotten that the Romans constructed many of their 

 roads upon ancient British trackways ; thus, according to Sir R. C. Hoare, the 

 Via Julia Maritima which sku-ted the South Wales coast of the Bristol Channel 

 (after the manner of the South Wales Railway) occupied the site of the British 

 Akeman-street ; the Via Julia Montana, that of the British Ryknield-street ; 

 the northern and southern Watling-streets, originally British roads, were also 

 adopted by the Romans as military ways communicating between the several 

 stations which they established in North Wales, and which are mentioned in the 

 Iters with their respective distances from each other with surprising .accuracy. 



That portion of the Via Orientalis from Magna to Br.avinium and thence 

 to Uriconium appears to have been a branch of the British Southern Watling- 

 street. It be.ars that name in the vicinity of Stretford and Kingsland at the 

 present day, and is noted ou Sir R. C. Hoare's map of Cambria Romana as an 

 original British trackway. 



