A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



particular it is credible enough that a Roman road connected Leicester 

 and Huntingdon. It cannot however be called by any means certain. The 

 line of a Roman road can be traced clearly enough for fifteen miles from 

 Leicester along the ' Gartree Way ' to the Roman site at Medbourne, on 

 the limit of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, and some existing 

 roads and boundaries warrant the conjecture that this road ran on in the 

 same straight line from Medbourne eight miles towards Stanion. In the 

 centre of our county all traces fail, but on its eastern edge a lane which 

 runs due east from Titchmarsh towards the Roman road at Alconbury in 

 Huntingdonshire has been noted as possibly Roman. The whole is a 

 slender chain of evidence with a great gap in the middle and weak links 

 at the end. But it deserves note as a possibility. 



(4) Two other Roman roads, partly coinciding, have been alleged 

 to cross our county. The one is said to go from Borough Hill by 

 Chipping Warden to the Roman site at Alchester in Oxfordshire, the 

 other from Dow Bridge on Watling Street by Borough Hill and Chipping 

 Warden to the Portway north of Oxford. Neither has the least support 

 in facts. They appear to have been suggested to various writers, partly 

 by some details in Richard of Cirencester's forged Itinerary, partly by the 

 belief that Borough Hill and Chipping Warden were the sites of large 

 towns, and partly by the idea that ' Portway ' denotes a Roman road. All 

 three reasons are of course worthless. 



5. Industries : The Castor Potteries 



We have now described the normal features of Roman Northampton- 

 shire, that is, the features of settled Romano-British civilization — towns, 

 villas, roads — which characterize this county equally with any other 

 ordinary part of southern, non-military Britain. There remains a feature 

 which obviously belongs to the settled civilization of the district but 

 which is somewhat peculiar to it. This feature is supplied by one or 

 perhaps two industries, some uncertain traces of iron workings and some 

 unquestionable remains of extensive potteries. 



Of the iron workings there is little to tell. Ironstone lies accessible 

 near the surface in many parts of the county, and slag, taken to be the 

 refuse of iron workings, has been noted in connexion with Roman 

 remains near Oundle, Rockingham, Laxton, KingsclifFe, Bulwick and 

 Wansford.' But none of these sites has ever been seriously examined 

 except Wansford, and the Wansford finds are not satisfactory. Mr. 

 Artis thought that he there detected considerable ironworks. But he 

 has left no details on record except a drawing of an alleged smelting 

 furnace (see his plate xxv.), and this, as Mr. Gowland has pointed out to 

 me, has nothing to do with ironworking at all, but perhaps belongs to a 

 potter's apparatus. While therefore our evidence makes it not im- 

 probable that the Northamptonshire ironstone was worked in the Roman 

 period, it does not justify the confident assertions usually made to that 

 effect. 



* See the alphabetical index at the end of this article. 

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