36 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF YORK AND DISTRICT 



the Ure and Swale. The advantages, however, which its central position 

 gave it as the military headquarters of the district, led to its connection 

 with the Roman roads which skirted the edges of the plain. The present 

 road which runs east to the Wolds at Garrowby Hill united it to the road 

 from Brough on the Humber to the Roman station on the Derwent at 

 Malton ; while the normal approach from the south is represented by the 

 road which leaves York by Micklegate Bar, and, running south-south-west 

 to Tadcaster, joins the road from Doncaster and Castleford to Isurium on 

 Bramham Moor. A road also led from York north-west to Isurium, 

 approximately on the line of the modern road to Aldborough and Borough- 

 bridge. Protected on the north by the forest land on the left bank of the 

 Ouse, the roads which joined York to the rest of the country ran east and 

 west ; and the Roman Eburacum, midway between two lines of road 

 which ran from south to north, held the communications and commanded 

 both at once. 



The Romans, then, made Eburacum, a name in which the Celtic 

 appellation of the place was latinised, a strategic centre which became the 

 capital of the northern province of Britain, and, at any rate in the later 

 days of the Empire and in face of the danger with which Picts and Scots 

 threatened the north, the headquarters of their power in the whole country. 

 Of its history during the earliest period of Teutonic invasion nothing can 

 be said. Ida, the founder of the Northumbrian kingdom, made his home 

 far to the north on the basaltic rock of Bamburgh ; and, south of the Tees, 

 another Anglian chieftain, iElle, made himself master of Yorkshire and 

 founded the kingdom known as Deira. His famous son, Eadwine, who 

 united both the northern kingdoms and, ruling from the Firth of Forth 

 to the Trent, pushed his conquests beyond the Pennines and to the borders 

 of Wales, certainly recognised the importance of York. It would be, 

 perhaps, incorrect to speak of York as his capital, for he made his residence 

 in various parts of his realm, and, where the king was, there was the capital 

 for the time being. But, with the conversion of Eadwine and his court to 

 Christianity, it was within the walls of the Roman city that the king 

 received baptism and the metropolitan church of the north was founded. 

 Although after the death of Eadwine in battle at Hatfield, east of Doncaster, 

 in 633, the Northumbrian kingdom was again divided, and York itself 

 played only an incidental part in its subsequent reunion under Oswiu, 

 the city was the natural metropolis, civil and ecclesiastical, of Deira. In 

 the middle of the eighth century, during the decline of the kingdom, the 

 bishop of York first took the title of archbishop, and the school established 

 in connection with the cathedral church became, under its famous master 

 Alcuin, for the time being one of the most celebrated centres of education 

 in Europe. 



By virtue of its position on a tidal river at the head of a great estuary, 

 York offered itself as an objective to invaders who came from the lands 

 across the North Sea. In 867 the Danish host, after wintering in East 

 Anglia, came up the Humber and, taking advantage of civil war between 

 two rival kings, conquered York. From this period began that epoch of 

 Danish colonisation which has left its indelible mark upon the place- 

 names of the East and North Ridings, and decided the eventual form 



