A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



bridge, at least a raised causeway with culverts carrying the Fosse over the 

 most marshy and low-lying part of the route. The notification in the 

 Itinerary would then be for the benefit of the traveller from the south, 

 indicating where he would leave the high ground over which he had so long 

 been passing for the alluvial levels of the Trent valley with their attendant 

 dangers of swamp and flood. Unfortunately such notifications do not occur 

 in the Itinerary, nor is this one so lucid in its form as to have much claim 

 to be considered such a notification. 



The fact is that we waste time thus torturing the sense of the Itinerary 

 and the probabilities of the case. It seems plain that there existed a ' station ' 

 — perhaps a very small one — at the Fosse near Thorpe, and connected perhaps 

 with the remains actually observed here, and this station was known as Ad 

 Pontem. Why it was so called, whether a now vanished branch-road crossed 

 the Trent, or the crossing of the Fosse over the Devon is concerned, and whether 

 that crossing was in Roman days exactly where it now is, and whether there 

 was any other bridge for the Fosse in the low ground beside the Trent, are ques- 

 tions which it is useless to ask, because we lack evidence at present to answer 

 them. Equally idle is it to inquire why the Itinerary names Ad Pontem in 

 one place and omits it in another. Such omissions are not uncommon in this 

 as in other road-books, and their causes are in general neither discoverable nor 

 worth discovering. 



Resuming our route,' the road now ascends to the higher ground between 

 the Trent and Devon valleys, and passes through the parish of Flintham, where 

 Roman pottery has been found. For eight miles from East Stoke it runs in 

 an absolutely straight line to High Thorpe near Bingham (200 ft.)," where 

 after crossing the railway it finally leaves the high road, which turns off to 

 Nottingham. For the whole distance from Flintham to Willoughby, where 

 it crosses the county boundary, it serves as a division between parishes, except 

 at Cropwell Butler, where the parish lies on either side of it. About six 

 miles from East Stoke the road reaches East Bridgeford, where it passes right 

 through the middle of the ' station ' of Margidunum " fourteen miles from 

 Brough. 



At High Thorpe there is another slight turn, and thence it is straight, 

 and still a passable road, for three and a half miles to Cotgrave Gorse (250 ft.). 

 From here to the crossing of the Nottingham and Melton road, near Widmer- 

 pool station, it is described as ' a wide rough track, not appearing very straight 

 because of encroachments. '" Between East Bridgeford and Willoughby Stukeley 

 found what he took to be the pavement of the road ' very manifest,' and near 

 Lodge-in-the- Wolds, in Cotgrave parish, it was (he says) 100 ft. broad and 

 made of ' great blue flagstones laid edgewise very carefully,' which were taken, 

 he said, from quarries near. 'From this point,' he writes, ' it has been entirely 

 paved with red flints, seemingly brought from the sea-coasts : these are laid 

 with the smoothest face upwards upon a bed of gravel over the clayey marl,' 

 and he mentions a local tradition that this pavement, ' very broad and visible 

 when not covered with dirt,' extended from Leicester to Newark. Gale speaks 



*' About here Stukeley, in his view of Ad Pontem, as he calls Bridgeford {It'tn. Cur. pi. 90), represents a 

 tumulus or barrow apparently right across the line of the road. It may be intended to indicate the position of 



Vernemetum (see below). « /- j • . z> „ , 



"See p. 15. "Codrington, Rom. Roads, 248. 



