ROMANO-BRITISH 

 WARWICKSHIRE 



I. Sketch of Roman Britain. 2. Sketch of Roman Warwickshire. 3. Places of settled 

 occupation : Cave's Inn, High Cross, Mancetter, Chesterton, Alcester. 4. Other 

 settled sites. 5. Roads. 6. Index. 



i. SKETCH OF ROMAN BRITAIN 



WITH the Romano-British period we begin to pass from the 

 prehistoric into the historic. But we do not reach at once 

 the domain of full history. We obtain guidance from the 

 allusions or narratives of ancient writers, but we still depend 

 very largely on archaeological evidence, and we cannot construct any 

 narrative history of our subject. This is partly due to the fact that our 

 knowledge is insufficient, but it arises still more from the nature of the 

 subject. Roman Britain was not an independent unit : it was only a 

 part of a vast and complex empire. Roman Warwickshire was still less 

 an independent unit. It was a part of Roman Britain and a part not 

 recognized as such by the Romans. In fact, the phrase Roman War- 

 wickshire, though convenient from its brevity, is strictly speaking a 

 contradiction in terms. When the Romans ruled our island, neither 

 Warwickshire nor any other of our counties was yet in existence, nor 

 was Britain divided into any districts geographically coinciding with 

 them. Neither the boundaries of the Celtic tribes nor those of the 

 Roman administrative areas, so far as we know them, agree with our 

 existing county boundaries, and students of the Roman remains found 

 in any one county have to deal with a division of land which for their 

 purposes is accidental and arbitrary. Warwickshire to the archaeologist 

 concerned with the Roman period is a meaningless area devoid of unity. 

 He can describe it but he cannot write anything like a real history of 

 it. It has seemed desirable, therefore, in the following paragraphs 

 to diverge a little from the plan followed by most county historians 

 in dealing with Roman antiquities. Hitherto it has been customary 

 to give a narrative of the chief events recorded by ancient writers as 



1 For the following article I have searched the literature for myself and have visited the chief sites 

 and museums. I have to thank Mr. W. H. Stevenson and Mr. G. B. Grundy for various help, and also 

 Mr. Willoughby Gardner, the Rev. J. H. Bloom, Mr. S. Stanley, and others named below. I may add 

 that I have found the task of getting accurate information about details a far more laborious one than the 

 length of this article or the importance of the subject might suggest. In the result, however, I have 

 been able to include a good deal of unpublished material. 



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