CELTIC AND ROMANO- 

 BRITISH HERTFORDSHIRE 



BEFORE the Roman occupation and indeed till long afterwards the 

 south-eastern part of Hertfordshire, lying on the London clay, and 

 a little to the north and west of the clay, was a part of a dense 

 woodland which also covered Middlesex and the south-west of 

 Essex.' Few Roman remains have been found in this district, and, except 

 along the line of Ermine Street, it probably remained comparatively 

 uninhabited till it was cleared and settled two or three centuries before 

 the Norman Conquest.' The rest of the county is on chalk, which on 

 the north-eastern side is covered with boulder clay and to the west, on the 

 Chiltern Hills, by ' clay with flints.' Both these surface-soils, but particu- 

 larly the former, are known for their 

 fertility, and consequently these districts 

 have long been famed as corn-growing 

 lands. This may be the reason why they 

 were selected for settlement by the Belgic 

 tribes who overran the south-eastern 

 quarter of Britain about B.C. 200 and are 

 known to have been agriculturists.' This -,. t r- c c 



o. 1 • 1 Top of Late Celtic Sword Scabbard 



people came from Gallia Belgica, which from Verulamium 



covered the northern part of Gaul, from 



Paris to the Rhine, and seem to have settled here by tribes. They 

 continued an intimate intercourse with their kinsmen across the Channel 

 and had a higher standard of civilization than the other inhabitants of this 

 island. They were the first to introduce into Britain a coinage such as 

 was in use in Belgic Gaul, and certain elegantly-shaped cordoned urns 

 seem to be confined to the district settled by them. In general, they shared 

 with the rest of Britain the Late Celtic art, principally in bronze, showing 

 elaborate designs of the returning spiral of which that on the top of a 

 sword scabbard lately found at Verulamium is a good example. The orna- 

 ment on it is characteristically Late Celtic, possibly of the earlier part of 

 the first century a.d.* 



The tribe that inhabited the district now known as Hertfordshire, up 

 to the Lea, was the Catuvellauni, miscalled by Ptolemy the Catyeuchlani. 



1 At the present day in driving along the Great North Road the scenery changes a little north of 

 Welwyn from woodland to the South to open country to the north. 



^ No Roman remains are recorded as having been found in the area bounded approximately by 

 Watiing Street on the west, Sandridge to Digswell and the River Mimram to Hertingfordbury on the north 

 and an imaginary line from Hertingfordbury southward to the county boundary. 



' The Trinovantes supplied Caesar with corn, and a wheat-ear appears on many of the British coins. 



* Proc. Soc. Jntij. (1911-12), xxiv, 132. 



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