ROMANO-BRITISH NORFOLK 



were mostly the Roman upper classes of the natives. The common 

 assertion that they were Roman officers or officials, may be set aside as 

 rarely, if ever, correct. 



The peasantry who worked on these estates, or were otherwise occu- 

 pied in the country, lived in rude hamlets, sometimes in pit dwellings, 

 sometimes in huts, with few circumstances of comfort or pleasure. Their 

 civilization, however, as we have said, was predominantly Roman in all 

 such matters as the objects in common use or the warming and decora- 

 tion of the houses. Even among the country folk the Late Celtic art, 

 as an art, appears mainly to have vanished. 



One feature, not a prominent one, remains to be noticed — trade and 

 industry. We should, perhaps, place first the agricultural industry, which 

 produced wheat and wool. Both were exported in the fourth century, 

 and the export of wheat to the towns of the lower Rhine is mentioned 

 by an ancient writer as considerable. Unfortunately the details of this 

 agriculture are almost unknown : perhaps we shall be able to estimate it 

 better when the Romano-British ' villas ' have been better explored. 

 Rather more traces have survived of the lead mining and iron mining, 

 which, at least during the first two centuries of our era, was carried on 

 with some vigour in half a dozen districts — lead on Mendip, in Shrop- 

 shire, Flintshire and Derbyshire ; iron in the Weald and the Forest of 

 Dean. Other minerals were less important. The gold mentioned by 

 Tacitus proved very scanty, and the far-famed Cornish tin seems (accord- 

 ing to present evidence) to have been worked comparatively little and 

 late in the Roman occupation. The chief commercial town was, from 

 the earliest times, Londinium (London), a place of some size and wealth, 

 and perhaps the residence of the chief authorities who controlled taxes 

 and customs dues. 



Finally, let us sketch the roads. We may distinguish four groups, 

 all commencing from one centre, London. One road ran south-east to 

 Canterbury and the Kentish ports. A second ran west and south-west 

 to Silchester, and thence by ramifications to Winchester, Dorchester 

 and Exeter, Bath, Gloucester and South Wales. A third, Watling 

 Street, ran north-west across the Midlands to Wroxeter, and thence to 

 the military districts of the north-west : it also gave access to Leicester 

 and the north. A fourth, to which we shall return, ran to Colchester 

 and the eastern counties, and also to Lincoln and York and the military 

 districts of the north-east. To these must be added a long single road, 

 the only important one which had no connection with London. This is 

 the Foss, which cuts obliquely across 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 much resemble the 

 roads of mediaeval England in their grouping or economic significance, 



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