Britain's Earliest Roads 9 



trading towns with each other. At commanding points 

 along or near these roads the Romans constructed camps, and 

 so placed their legions as to protect the centres of metallurgical 

 industry and the roads leading to them. . . . The Romans 

 did not originate the sites of many new seaport towns or towns 

 on large, navigable rivers, and, when they did so, as in the case 

 of London, Richborough, Uriconium, Rochester, Canterbury, 

 it was for strategical reasons, or indirectly connected with the 

 traffic in minerals, the great industry of Britain during the 

 Roman occupation as it was before it. ... Silchester . . . 

 was forty-five miles from London, and was on high ground 

 away from river or forests, and not far from the junction of a 

 number of land-routes. It was on dry ground on which 

 waggons could travel. It was convenient for roads giving 

 access to Cornwall for tin ; to the Mendips for lead, copper or 

 brass ; Gloucester and South Wales for iron ; and from these 

 termini there were routes passable to the east and south coasts 

 of England." 



From all this it would seem that the mineral wealth and the 

 trading interests which had inspired the line of route of the 

 earliest British roads were, side by side with military con- 

 siderations, leading factors in the particular direction given 

 to the Roman roads that followed them. 



As for the Roman roads themselves, so admirably were they 

 built that some of those laid down in ancient Rome and in 

 France have been in use for from 1500 to 2000 years, while 

 remains of Roman roads found in Britain, buried deeply under 

 the debris of centuries, have still borne striking evidence of 

 the solid manner in which they were first constructed. 



But the point that here arises for consideration is, not only 

 the high quality of the great roads the Romans built in 

 Britain, but the broad-minded policy by which the builders 

 themselves were influenced. The provision of a system of 

 scientifically constructed roads wherever they went was, 

 primarily, part of the Roman plan of campaign in the wars 

 of aggrandisement they carried on ; but it was further 

 designed to aid in developing the resources of the country 

 concerned, while it was, also, carried out in Britain by the 

 Roman State itself, on lines embracing the transport conditions 

 of the country as a whole, and in accordance with a unified and 

 well-planned system of internal communication on " national " 



