ROMANO-BRITISH WARWICKSHIRE 



it runs through Warwickshire ; at Fazeley it crosses the Tame into 

 Staffordshire. Constant use through many centuries has presumably 

 destroyed almost everywhere its Roman paving. There is however a 

 story that during the sewerage works at Atherstone in 1868 the old 

 Roman paving was found at varying depths, marked with grooves of 

 chariot-wheels and laid in slabs like those in the Forum of Rome. What 

 truth underlies this tale is impossible and perhaps unimportant to dis- 

 cover. Certainly no such paving as that of the Via Sacra at Rome has 

 been found elsewhere in Roman Britain, and slab-paving of any sort is 

 rare on Romano-British roads. 



(3) The Fosse is the name used since Saxon times for the road or 

 series of roads which ran from Lincoln past Leicester, Cirencester and 

 Bath into the west. Its general course is no less certain than that of 

 Watling Street. In Warwickshire it is still for the most part used as a 

 road or field-track ; for about half its course it forms intermittently a 

 parish boundary. It enters the county at High Cross, passes Street 

 Ashton, Stretton-under-Fosse, Brinklow (where perhaps later earthworks 

 have been thrown across it), Chesterton and Halford, and leaves the 

 county at Stretton-on-the-Fosse. Except at Chesterton, and perhaps at 

 Halford (p. 246), it traverses no sites known to have been inhabited in 

 Romano-British times. 



The Romans seem to have drawn some distinction between the Fosse 

 from Lincoln to High Cross and the Fosse from High Cross southwards. 

 The former belonged to an itinerary route from Lincoln to London ; the 

 latter has no place in the Itinerary. The reason is not now discoverable 

 with certainty. It can hardly be connected with any distinction 

 between military and commercial roads for which distinction there 

 seems, indeed, to be no proper warrant. But it suggests that the 

 Romans did not regard the Fosse quite as we are inclined to do that is, 

 as a great through route from Lincolnshire into Somerset. It did serve 

 that end, but in Roman times that was not its principal purpose. 



(4) Lastly, we have to mention two branch roads, both short and 

 doubtful. Possibly a road connected Alcester and Droitwich, though 

 the assertions often made about it are too positive and the appellation 

 often given to it, Lower Saltway, seems devoid of ancient authority. 

 The line of the existing highway between the two towns, both Roman 

 sites, is really the only evidence, and this, though not adverse, is not 

 conclusive in favour of the road. Another road may perhaps have run 

 from Alcester to Stratford. The existing highway between the two 

 places is singularly straight, and where it once diverges (near Alcester) 

 the straight line is taken up by a field-track. Moreover the name of 

 Stratford, as Mr. Stevenson assures me, is genuinely old and may really 

 indicate a Roman road. Unfortunately hardly any Roman remains, 

 except coins, have been found in or near Stratford (p. 248) ; and, sup- 

 posing the road to be Roman, there is no sort of indication of its further 

 course east of Stratford. On the other hand we may reject without 

 scruple the idea of a Roman road from Alcester to Warwick. No trace 



243 



