A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE 



remains discovered in the county, we might expect to meet the features 

 which we have sketched in the preceding paragraphs. To some extent 

 our expectation will not be disappointed. There certainly existed in 

 the district which is now Warwickshire a Romano-British civilization 

 of the normal type. But it was not at all normal in amount. Towns 

 and villages were few and very small, and most of them hardly deserve 

 such names at all. Villas were even less abundant. Industries were 

 wholly absent. Roads, though prominent and important, merely crossed 

 the district and do not affect its character. In general, the Roman 

 remains of the county are scanty and disappointing. Some allowance 

 must no doubt be made for the absence of exploration and excavation. 

 The spade has seldom been used for archaeological purposes in Warwick- 

 shire, and even the results of sporadic discoveries have been less 

 systematically recorded than in most of our counties. Some distinc- 

 tion must be drawn, too, between different portions of the county. The 

 south and east, the more open and fertile districts, were better settled, 

 apparently, than the west and north, which include the woodlands of 

 Arden. But on the whole we must admit that the county has to be 

 classed as one of the thinner spaces (if we may use the phrase) in 

 Roman Britain. Probably we may find the reason for this in the 

 general character of the English midlands during the Roman period. 



The Romano-British civilization of the midlands differed markedly 

 from that of the surrounding districts. In the latter we meet with 

 striking embodiments of Romano-British life, such as the country towns 

 of Verulamium in Hertfordshire, Chesterford in western Essex, Castor 

 on the edge of Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire, Wroxeter in 

 Shropshire, Gloucester, Cirencester, Silchester, each in its degree a 

 place of note. The midland area contained no such elements. Except 

 Leicester, its towns were far too small to be matched with any of those 

 just named ; indeed, they are hardly towns at all, and the whole 

 Romano-British life of the region was simple, plain and devoid of 

 character and salient features. The reason for this may perhaps be 

 found in physical facts. The midlands, though often described by 

 geographers as the central plain of our island, do not in reality form 

 a plain in the ordinary sense of that word. They form a complex dis- 

 trict which is especially notable for the low scale and small size of its 

 various physical features. Little of it is flat, but it has no high hills or 

 distinct ranges. Woods abound, but there are no continuous tracts of 

 forest. Rivers rise within it, but they reach no size till they have 

 passed its borders ; their valleys are small and shallow, and even their 

 watersheds are faint and ill-defined. It is a pleasant land, alike to those 

 that dwell in it and those that wander through it ; but, in the main, 

 it is not fertile, or suited to corn or sheep, and thus it contains very 

 little to aid the growth of towns or of a large agricultural population. 

 Its mineral wealth attracts a dense throng of inhabitants to one part of 

 it to-day, but that wealth was unknown in the Roman period. Then 

 too the woods, both those of Arden and others, were doubtless thicker 



228 



