BEGINNINGS OF TOWN-LIFE IN 



BRITAIN. 



BY • 



Dr. R. E. M. WHEELER. 



Being the substance of the Thirteenth Annual Norman Lockyer 

 Lecture, delivered on November 24, 1937, in the Hall of the 

 Goldsmiths' Company, London. 



The foundation of town-life in Britain has been ascribed to the Romans. 

 The Celts are regarded as essentially a mobile country-folk, with a fluid,, 

 non-localised system of administration that is epitomised for the modern 

 mind in the organisation of the Highland clan. ' The Germans and 

 English,' wrote Haverfield, of the pre-Roman populations, ' occupied 

 villages. . . . They dwelt scattered up and down the land. . . . The 

 appearance of town-life among any of them is a sign from the south.' 

 And a generation later, the most eminent of Haverfield's pupils and suc- 

 cessors has recently affirmed that the ' hut-clusters ' which in part 

 represent for us the pre-Roman settlements of Britain ' were in no sense 

 the nuclei and symbols of British civilization ; they were not so much 

 cities as slums. To convert Britain into a province of the Roman 

 empire was to civilize it in the most literal sense of the word : to 

 furnish it [for the first time] with towns.' 



The purpose of the present lecture is to test these assertions in the 

 light of advancing knowledge and to check our estimate of the Roman 

 contribution to British urbanisation — matters of fundamental historical 

 importance, in which nevertheless the determining factor is archaeology 

 rather than history. 



On the historical side the familiar evidence may be re-stated shortly. 

 To Julius Caesar, who knew only a part of south-eastern Britain, a British 

 ' city ' was a clearance in the woodland, fortified by rampart and ditch 

 and used as a place of refuge both for men and for animals in emergency. 

 For the rest, Caesar adds nothing to our picture of the native settlements 

 of Kent or Hertfordshire in his time. 7\rchaeological exploration of the 

 last few years at sites such as Wheathampstead, St. Albans and Colchester 

 has, however, supplied further details. These cities were of large size. 

 Wheathampstead, the earliest of them and possibly itself the ' oppidum 

 Cassivellauni ' stormed by Csesar in 54 B.C., was nearly 100 acres in 

 extent and strongly entrenched. The adjacent countryside was delimited 

 by boundary dykes which would also assist in the protection of flocks 

 and herds in time of unrest. And, not least, the situation of these towns 

 in the immediate vicinity of river-fords and cross-country routes indicates 



