ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE Higham. As far, then, as Clay Cross and Egstow, that is, for a distance of some 17 miles from Little Chester, the line of Rycknield Street seems well attested. We have even details of its structure. William Hutton saw a section cut up from the bottom near Little Chester. The Romans, he tells us, seemed to have taken out the soil for about 20 yards wide and I yard deep, perhaps till they came to a firm bottom, and rilled the whole up with stones of all sizes brought from Duffield, four miles up the river, cemented with coarse mortar (Hist, of Birmingham, ed. 3, 1 806, p. 2 1 6). Gratton, writing to Glover (i. 290), says he had seen several sections made in cutting ditches, and it seemed ' to be formed merely of such rubblestone and sharp gravel as was nearest at hand.' Pegge also declares that it was altogether composed of gravel for many miles. North of Clay Cross the course of the road becomes sadly uncertain. It is usually taken through or near Chesterfield, but no traces of it exist, and the remains found at Chesterfield are too few to require the assump- tion that a Roman road led to it (p. 255). Much further north, how- ever, we meet with some slight clues. Rather doubtful vestiges were noted near Eckington and Mosborough by a correspondent of Glover's in 1829, and at Beighton in 1847 a paved road was found during the construction of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln (now Great Central) Railway line, a few score yards north of Beighton station and 18 inches below the surface. 1 The place names Streetfields, east of Mosborough, and Stratfield, a little north of Beighton help to strengthen this scanty evidence. Yet further north, and beyond the boundary of Derbyshire, a Roman road was thought traceable on Brinsworth Common, previous to the enclosures. 2 All this suggests a road running down the west side of the Rother valley to the Roman fort at Templeborough farm, south- west of Rotherham. It is, perhaps, not rash to conjecture that the road which we know to have led from Little Chester to Clay Cross swerved north-east at some point north of the latter town, and passing Mos- borough and Beighton went on to Templeborough. 8 The total length of this road would be about 35 miles, or perhaps a trifle less. No intermediate ' station ' has ever been discovered between the two forts which it connects. Another and very different theory has been proposed respecting this road. It has been thought to have struck off north-east to the Roman ' station ' of Doncaster, passing Thorpe Salvin, which was originally called Thorpe Rikenild.* This view is not in itself incon- sistent with that propounded above. Roads may have run from Little 1 W. Askham, cited by Glover, i. 289 : he refers also to entrenchments, but their age is quite unknown. For the Beighton find, see Hunter, Hallamshire (1869), p. 23 note. 8 Wain wright, Wapentake ofStrafford and Tickbill, p. 23. The bishop of Cloyne (Wm. Bennet) preferred to suppose that the road ran due north from Chesterfield by Apperknowle and Ridgeway (Lysons, p. ccxi : so Watkin, Derb. Arch. Journ. viii. 209). But we have no evidence of an ancient road along this line, and the ascents and descents required for it are much greater than those of the route indicated in the text. Watkin (Derb. Arch. Journ. viii. 210) accepts also the Mosborough and Beighton road as Roman, but quite unnecessarily assumes that it did not go to Templeborough.
- Brit. Arch. Auoc. xxx. 115 ; Kirkby, Inquest (A.D. 1284-5) in the publications of the Surtees
Soc. xlix. pp. 3, n, etc. 245
