ROMANO-BRITISH WARWICKSHIRE 



details of this industry 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 Shropshire, Flintshire and Derbyshire ; iron in the Weald and the 

 Forest of Dean. Other minerals were less important. The gold men- 

 tioned by Tacitus proved very scanty, and the far-famed Cornish tin 

 seems (according 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 special authorities who 

 controlled taxes and customs dues. 



Finally let us sketch the roads. In doing so we must dismiss from 

 our minds the Four Great Roads which are mentioned in some early 

 English documents. Three of these four roads were Roman in origin, 

 but the fourth is not, and the idea of any such Four Great Roads is alien 

 to the Roman road system. We may divide this Roman system into 

 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 from London 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 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 two roads which 

 had no connection with London. The most important of these is the 

 Fosse, which cut obliquely across the island from north-east to south- 

 west, joining Lincoln, Leicester, Bath and Exeter. The other is the 

 Rycknield or Icknield Street which ran from Yorkshire past Derby and 

 Birmingham to join the Fosse in Gloucestershire. These roads must 

 be understood as being only the main roads, divested for the sake of 

 clearness of 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 resemble the roads of 

 medieval England in their grouping and economic significance. We 

 may rather compare them to our railways which radiate similarly from 

 London. In the following paragraphs we shall be concerned with the 

 third, fifth and sixth of these roads, Watling Street, Fosse and Rycknield 

 Street. 



2. SKETCH OF ROMAN WARWICKSHIRE 



Such in the main was that large part of Roman Britain in which 

 ordinary non-military civilized life prevailed. To that part Warwick- 

 shire belongs, and when we pass on to survey in detail the Roman 



227 



