ROMANO-BRITISH 

 STAFFORDSHIRE 



DURING the period of the Roman occupation of Britain there 

 were no districts which correspond to our present counties. 

 Neither the boundaries of the British tribes nor those of the 

 Roman administrative areas, as far as we know them, agree 

 exactly with existing county boundaries. 1 At the time of the Roman invasion 

 the greater part of Staffordshire was most probably inhabited by the 

 Cornavii, a British tribe whose territory, we learn from Ptolemy, writing 

 about A.D. 1 20, included Deva (Chester), and Viroconium (Wroxeter). 2 



The Roman occupation under the Emperor Claudius began in A.D. 43 ; 

 at first the subjugation of the country was comparatively easy. A strong 

 foot-hold was obtained in Kent and Essex, and then the army was formed into 

 three divisions, the Second Legion going south-west towards Somerset and 

 Devon, the Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions north-west towards Shrews- 

 bury and Chester, and the Ninth Legion north towards Lincoln. Professor 

 Haverfield, in writing of this period, divides Britain into two districts ; s the 

 lowlands, comprising the southern, south-western, and eastern districts up to 

 the Humber he describes as civilian ; whilst the uplands, including the 

 northern and western districts, he describes as military. The former, 

 including probably the southern and middle parts of Staffordshire, was 

 occupied by A.D. 47 or 48, and the latter, possibly comprising the northern 

 part of the county, which partakes of the characteristics of Derbyshire, was 

 subjugated about A.D. 48 or shortly afterwards. 



There can be little doubt that at the time of the Roman occupation of 

 Britain, Staffordshire was woodland or waste, and thinly populated. For this 

 reason the Romano-British period as regards this district has little history. 

 The county is mostly hilly. In the north it rises in places to 1,500 ft. ; in the 

 middle it is undulating and was formerly forest ; to the south it is again 

 hilly. By the Romans it would have been thought unattractive and inhos- 

 pitable, and it therefore became to them merely a portion of territory through 

 which roads and waterways passed across Britain. Except in the extreme 

 north of the county few, if any, Roman remains have been found away from 

 the great highways the roads and the rivers. 



1 Much of the information contained in this article has been taken from Professor Haverfield's contribu- 

 tions on ' Roman Remains ' to the volumes of this series. 



' Ptolemy, Geographic (ed. Firmin Didot, 1883), i, 99. There is no satisfactory evidence that the 

 Cornavii also inhabited Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and part of Derbyshire, as stated by Camden, Horsley, 

 and Baxter. See as to this point Camden, Brit. (ed. Gough) ; Horsley, Brit. Rom. 368 ; Baxter, Glossarium 

 Antiqultatum Brit. (1709), 73 ; Haverfield, in V.C..H. Warw. i, 229. 



3 V.C.H. Derb. i, 192. 



183 



