Fig. 17.—London and the Roman Roads.

In the (so-called) Laws of Edward the Confessor, a clause treats of the King’s peace on the four great roads, Watlingestrete, Fosse, Hekenildestrete, and Ermingestrete, two of which are said to run through the length of the realm and two across.[52] In the British legends given by Geoffrey, the making of these roads is ascribed to Belinus, and they are said to have been paved with stone and mortar; the four are evidently the chief Roman roads in the island. The identification of the Watling Street is certain, for Bede says that St. Albans was called Watlingcester, and Saxon charters show that Hampstead and Paddington were on it; it is the modern Edgware Road. Henry of Huntingdon tells us that the Watling Street ran from the south-east to the north-west, and that Erming Street ran from north to south. Higden, in the fourteenth century, says that the Watling Street began at Dover and passed through Kent and “over the Thames at London, west of Westminster,” then to St. Albans, Dunstable, Stratford, etc.[53] Camden says: “The Roman road commonly called Watling Street leads straight to London over Hampstead Heath, whence is a fine prospect of a beautiful city and cultivated country.”

The best reasons that can be given for the position of the Watling Street are that it was first formed before London became of much importance, that it avoided the great Essex forest, and passed over the Thames at a point convenient for a ferry on its way to and from Dover.

Such prehistoric traffic as there was, by a sort of commercial drainage, gathering together in a stream directed on Dover, must have tended to pass the river with the least possible deflection. Whether or not the great Watling Street is entirely of Roman date, a ferry at Westminster may have superseded the Brent-ford. The actual passage was probably from Tothill Street to Stangate on the south side of the river: “Stangate” is still used as the name of a Roman road in the North by Hadrian’s Great Wall. After the Palace of Westminster was built, the ferry must have been diverted by the Horseferry Road, and Higden may refer to this position.

Clark suggests that “the Tothill” was a Saxon military mound, as such mounds are sometimes called “toot-hills”; if so, it was a protection overlooking the Watling Street, and may very well have been a mound raised by Alfred in the Danish struggle.[54] “Le Tothull” is mentioned in 1250, when Henry III. granted the Abbey to hold a fair there. Hollar’s view shows a mound. The Tothill was common ground, and everything points to its having been formerly a defensive work. The west gate of Westminster was “towards Tothill” (1350), and Vincent Square now represents Tothill Fields. The Lang ditch, which nearly surrounded Westminster, and which can be traced back to the twelfth century, was probably a dyke of defence.

Stukeley, writing in 1722, when material evidence was not so hard to find, says that the Watling Street crossed over another Roman road (now Oxford Street), which passed by the back of Kensington into the great road to Brentford and Staines, “a Roman road all the way.” The Watling Street then went across the end of Hyde Park, and by St. James’s Park to the street near Palace Yard called the Wool Staple, and crossed to Stangate on the opposite side of the river. The southward continuation of the road then passed over St. George’s Fields to Deptford and Blackheath; “a small portion of the ancient way pointing to (or from) Westminster Abbey is now the common road: ... from the top of Shooters’ Hill the direction of the road is very plain both ways: ... beyond the hill it is very straight as far as the ken reaches: on Blackheath is a tumulus.”

From the Watling Street, on Blackheath, was obtained the first prospect of London, where travellers during the Middle Age paused, as visitors to Rome paused on their way only half a century agone. The mayor with all the crafts of the city, in 1415, rode out thus far to meet Henry V. returning from France.

The King from Eltham sone he cam,
Hys prisenors with hym dede brynge,
And to the Blak-heth ful sone he cam.
He saw London withoughte lesynge;
Heil, ryall London, seyde our Kyng,
Crist the Kepe evere from care.—Lydgate.

In his letter to Wren Dr. Woodward says that in several places lying near by in a line, particularly on this side of Shooters’ Hill, where the country is low, there remained a raised highway 40 feet wide and 4 feet high. According to Allen’s history a portion of the Roman way leading to Stangate was found just north of Newington Church in 1824.Stukeley thought that the west-to-east road, over the present Oxford Street, originally passed to the north of London into Essex (by Old Street), “because London was not then considerable, but in a little time Holborn was struck out from it, entering the city at Newgate, and so to London-Stone, the Lapis Milliaris, and hence the reason why the name of Watling Street is still preserved in the city.”

There can be no doubt that Stukeley’s account of the Roman roads is generally true, but the theory of the great road by Old Street seems unlikely, although the latter is quite certainly a Roman way, and was called Ealde Street in the twelfth century.[55] The Roman road has been found 11 feet below the surface, together with Roman coins.[56] There cannot be a doubt that, in late Roman days at least, the great west-to-east road passed through the city and by the Mile End Road through Stratford and the other places named from “street” to Chelmsford and Colchester. Besides the great Roman roads there were of course many local ways. The High Street from Aldersgate to Islington, also mentioned in the twelfth century,[57] is probably, like the gate through which it passed, Roman too. Stow’s hypothesis that Old Street branched away from the top of Aldersgate Street seems best to meet the case. Stukeley’s suggestion about the naming of “Watling Street” in the city, which has been so embroidered upon by recent writers, seems, as we shall show (p. 150), to be a mistake.

It is asserted in a fourteenth-century document quoted by Lysons that the great east road passed the Lea by Old Ford before Matilda built Bow Bridge; but this has no weight in excluding the road by Aldgate against the evidence of the great road itself. The name Stratford is mentioned as Strachford in a charter of the Conqueror.[58] In the life of St. Erkenwald given in the Golden Legend, it is said that his body was brought to London from Barking through Stratford after a miraculous passage of the Lea. There may have been a road by Old Street and Old Ford, but there must have been a road by Holborn and Whitechapel through Newgate and Aldgate.[59]The branch from the great Watling Street to the city, by Tyburn and St. Andrew’s Holborn, is described in a charter giving in Saxon the boundaries of Westminster, dated 951, but not original. This charter, even if forged, can hardly be later than the era of the Conquest, when the coterminous manor of Eya was given to the Abbey by Geoffrey de Mandeville; and the names found in it must then have been of immemorial antiquity. Mr. Stevenson, in a recent criticism of the document, accepts it as genuine and proposes the date 971.[60] It reads: “First up from the Thames along Merfleet to Pollenstock, so to Bulinga Fen, and along the old ditch to Cuforde. From Cuforde along the Tyburn to the Here Straet, and by it to the Stock of St. Andrew’s Church, then in London Fen south to Midstream of Thames, and by land and strand to the Merfleet.” Here Street is the usual Saxon name for a Roman road, but it will be convenient to use it in this case as a proper name.

The stream of Tyburn crossed Oxford Street just west of Stratford Place, and ran through the Green Park, and so to the west of Westminster. Cufford I find again, temp. Edward I., as in, or near, the Campis de Eya—now Hyde Park and St. James’s.[61] This Cowford was probably where Piccadilly “dip” crosses the Tyburn valley. A bridge is shown here in Faithorne’s map. The Here Street or military road is of course Oxford Street and Holborn, and London-Fen is the Fleet valley.[62]

The manor of Tyburn appears in Domesday. There can be no doubt as to the identification of the Here Street, for a document of 1222 gives as the boundaries of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, the water of Tyburn running to the Thames and the Strata Regia extending to London past the garden of St. Giles [in-the-Fields], and Roman remains have been found in Holborn. The Here Street has been traced between Silchester and Staines through Egham, and on this side of Staines, not far from Ashford, it has been found.[63] An under road to Kensington, etc., by Knightsbridge must also have been ancient. Knightsbridge is named in a twelfth-century charter, and it seems to be the same as the Kingsbridge in a charter of the Confessor.[64]From the fact that the Antonine Itinerary gives two routes to Lincoln,—one round to the west by the Watling Street, and one to the east by Colchester,—it seems probable that the direct Erming Street was made in the later Roman era.

The best critical account of the four Roman ways is in Origines CelticÆ and the ArchÆological Journal for 1857, in which Dr. Guest, working from charters, verifies their position. He considers that the portion of the Erming Street between London and Huntingdon was not a Roman paved road, although “it must have existed in the days of Edgar, and perhaps as early as the times of Offa.” “Tracks of an ancient causey may still be found alongside the turnpike road which leads from London to Royston,” beyond which the road passes straight on over the fens to a place called Ermingford in Domesday and Earmingaford in a charter of Edgar. To the south of London he lays down a “Stone Street” from Chichester through Bignor (Roman villa) and Dorking. In vol. ix. of ArchÆologia, Bray, the co-author of the History of Surrey, traces this “Roman road through Sussex and Surrey to London.” “That there was a great road from Arundel which ran north and north-east to London is very certain, considerable remains of it being now (1788) visible in many places.” Another road from the south seems to have passed through Croydon and Streatham, which in a charter of the Confessor is called Stratham.[65] Near Ockley the former was called “Stone Street Causeway,” and Camden speaks of it as “the old military road of the Romans called Stone Street.” It was “some 30 feet broad and some 4 or 5 feet thick of stones.” Considerable vestiges of this Roman road may even now be traced on the Ordnance Survey; approaching London it evidently passed through Epsom, Ewell, Merton, Tooting, and Clapham. Here then we have a great road from Chichester through Surrey over London Bridge and by Stamford Hill to Lincoln—the Erming Street. It seems impossible that such a work could have been undertaken in the time of the “Heptarchy,” and it must be a Roman road made subsequently to the Antonine Itinerary.

When London Bridge was built, or when a regular ferry over the Thames was established on this line, a new connection with the Canterbury Road (Watling Street) was evidently called for, and this link was provided by Kent Street (now Great Dover Street). Bagford, in his letter to Hearne, says that the Roman approach and military way led along Kent Street on the left-hand side, “and pointed directly to Dowgate by the Bishop of Winchester’s stairs, which to this day is called Stone Street.” I cannot, however, accept the inference as to the name Stone Street in this place, as it ran directly through what was Winchester Palace, where, as old views show, there cannot have been a street in the Middle Ages. The highway from the bridge going southwards really ran straight through the borough (Burh or South-work), and deflected on to Kent Street at St. George’s Church, which stood here early in the twelfth century (see Southwark, below, p. 110).

The English invaders came up the Watling Street and were unsuccessfully met at Crayford. At Ockley on the Stone Street there was a great battle with the Danes. William the Conqueror, after the battle of Hastings, took Dover and Canterbury and came to London by the Watling Street; then burning Southwark, but not venturing to assault the walled city, he moved down the Stone Street and across to Farnham and Wallingford, and then north-east, by the Icknield Way, and so commanded the northern Watling Street and Erming Street and cut off retreat. A recent study of his route made from Domesday Book makes him pass through Camberwell, Merton, Guildford, and Farnham. Then crossing the river by both Wallingford and Streatley, he approached London by Little Berkhamstead, Enfield, and Tottenham.[66]

A final consideration of the roads in relation to the city shows two great routes: (1) from west to east, through Staines to Colchester; and (2) from south to north, from Chichester to Lincoln. These roads, entering the city by Holborn and the bridge, and issuing by Aldgate and Bishopsgate, were throughout the Middle Ages the great market streets, and their intersection at Leadenhall formed the “Carfax” of London.

The best elucidation of the names of the roads we have been concerned with is given by Dr. Guest. One is the street of the Ermings or Fenmen, who gave their name to places on its course. The Icknield Way, which he gives good reasons for thinking was a British road, led to the district of the Iceni (compare Dr. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, p. 676). The Watling Street he supposes to be the Irishmen’s road, from Welsh Gwythel—Goidel—Irishman. These derivations seem to be a little over symmetrical. Other roads than that through St. Albans were called Watling Street, which almost seems to be a generic term, just as in Wales the Roman ways are called Sarn Helen. In the story of Maxen Wledig (Maximus Emperor) we are told that the Empress Helen made the roads. It is probably a similar legend where Florence says that old tradition had it that London was walled by Helen. Florence says that the Watling Street was called so from the sons of King Weatla: Can this be a corruption of Wledig, or can the reference be to the British prince Guithlin, who seems to have been in power about the time of the coming of the Saxons?[67]

Horsley and others have thought that these roads were laid down for the most part immediately after the Roman conquest by Claudius, and there can hardly be a doubt of their early existence when we consider the great works of Agricola as far off as the Roman Wall.[68] Moreover, one or two milestones which have been found bear the name of Hadrian. The antiquity of our place-names, roads, and bridges is well brought out in a seventh-century charter to Chertsey Abbey. The land boundary, beginning at the mouth of the Wey, passed by Weybridge, then by the mill-stream to the old Here Street and along it to Woburn Bridge, etc. This Here Street is doubtless the present road on the south bank of the Thames; it probably led from Southwark, through Clapham—called Cloppaham in the ninth century—by Wandsworth, where was a church in the tenth century, and by Kingston, the royal town and crowning place of the later Saxon kings.[69]

The Bridge.—We hear of the existence of the bridge about seventy years after Alfred’s time in connection with the punishment of a woman who was to be taken and “a-drownded at Lundene-brigce.”[70] In a poem on Holy Olaf the King of Norway, by a contemporary, he is said to have broken down London Bridge in an attack on the Danes in the interest of Ethelred about 1014.[71] It is curious that the English Chronicles do not speak of this, and it is difficult to fit in, but in any case the story is almost contemporary.

An extended but later account of the incident is given in the Heimskringla: “Now first they made for London and went up the Thames with the host of the ships, but the Danes held the city. On the other side of the river there is a great Cheaping-town called Southwark (Sudurvirke); there the Danes had great arrayal; they had dug great dykes, on the inner side whereof they had built a wall of turf and stone.... A bridge was there across the river betwixt the city and Southwark, so broad that waggons might be driven past each other thereover. On the bridge were made strongholds, both castles and bulwarks, looking down stream, so high that they reached a man above his waist; but under the bridge were pales stuck into the bottom of the river. And when an onset was made the host stood on the bridge all along it and warded it. King Ethelred was mickle mind-sick how he was to win the bridge.” King Olaf made wooden shelters over his boats, “and the host of the Northmen rowed right up under the bridge and lashed cables round the pales which upheld the bridge, and they fell to their oars and rowed down stream as hard as they might, ... and the pales having broken from under it, the bridge broke down by reason thereof; ... and after this they made an onset on Southwark and won it. And when the townsfolk [of London] saw that the river Thames was won, so that they might not hinder ships from faring up into the land, they were afeared, and gave up the town and took King Ethelred in. So says Ottar the Swart:—

O battle-bold, the cunning
Of Yggs storm! Yet thou brakest
Down London Bridge: it happed thee
To win the land of snakes there.”

This verse is sometimes translated so as to read “London Bridge is broken down” in the first line, like the well-known children’s song; but there have been many breakings down since the time of Olaf, and it is unnecessary to force such a remote origin for the ditty. As to the bridge itself, the account just given as to its being of wood agrees with the fact that no piers seem to have been preserved when it was rebuilt in the twelfth century. That it should have been fortified agrees with contemporary events, for Charles the Bald had built a fortified bridge at Paris to stop the pirates going up the river.

The bridge, as we have seen, was required by the Roman roads, and must have been of Roman origin. Roach Smith, indeed, even considered that it might have been the bridge by which Claudius is said to have crossed the river, and points out that the Itinerary shows that bridges were not uncommon in Britain.[72] “This presumptive evidence” [as to London Bridge being of early Roman origin] “is supported by recent discoveries. Throughout the entire line of the old bridge, the bed of the river was found to contain ancient wooden piles; and when these piles, subsequently to the erection of the new bridge (about 1835), were pulled up to deepen the channel of the river, many thousands of Roman coins, with abundance of Roman tiles and pottery, were discovered; and immediately beneath some of the central piles, brass medallions of Aurelius, Faustina, and Commodus. All these remains are indicative of a bridge. The enormous quantity of Roman coins may be accounted for by the well-known practice of the Romans to use them to perpetuate the memory of their conquests and public works. They may have been deposited either upon the building or repair of the bridge. The great rarity of the medallions is corroborative of this opinion.” Many bronzes and other works of art were also found.[73]

I incline to the view that the bridge may with greatest probability be assigned to the century when the Romans were consolidating their work in Britain, from the arrival of Agricola in A.D. 78. Within this period falls the date of the earliest medals found and the great building age of Hadrian, who reared the “Roman Wall.” It is tempting to suggest that the fine head of Hadrian, in 1863 found in the Thames, may have formed a part of a statue placed on the bridge to commemorate his visit. Bronze has always been too valuable a material for the head to have been wilfully cast away. Moreover, we have evidences of two bridges by the Roman Wall which were the work of Hadrian. That at Newcastle, called after him, Pons Ælii, had a history curiously parallel with London Bridge, for it gave way to a mediÆval bridge in 1248, which was destroyed in the flood of 1771. During the rebuilding parts of the Roman structure were found. Near Hexham, where the line of the wall crosses the North Tyne, there are still vestiges of a bridge which seems to have lasted down to 1771; it has three piers of masonry, having angular cut-waters up-stream. The spans were 35 feet, the piers about 16 feet transversely; the roadway was about 20 feet wide; at the ends, standing over the masonry abutments, were towers through which the roadway passed. “The platform of this bridge was undoubtedly of timber. Several of the stones which lie on the ground have grooves in them for admitting the spars. No arch-stones have been found.”[74]

Old London Bridge crossed the river just east of the existing bridge. Stow thought that the original bridge was still farther east, because St. Botolph’s Port is mentioned in connection with the bridge in a charter of the Conqueror. Notwithstanding that this conjecture was disproved so fully when the old bridge was destroyed, the theory still appears in standard books and on maps which profess to represent Old London.