ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE suggested on evidence which seems inadequate. It may be convenient at the close of this section to notice a few other ill-attested roads which could not be easily treated in connexion with any of the six certain roads. In the extreme south of the county a road has been thought to run by Edinghall and Lullington towards Tamworth. The evidence for it is scanty and its relation to other established roads is not clear. 1 Another road in the same neighbourhood has been put forward as a possible part of the Via Devana. It is supposed to run from Ashby de la Zouch by Blackfordby, Woodville, and Stapenhill to Burton-on-Trent and Rycknield Street. 3 Here again evidence is lacking. The same must be said, and said more decidedly, of an alleged road from Derby to Tutbury and thence along the south bank of the Dove to Uttoxeter. 8 What signi- ficance should be attached to the place-name Stretton-en-le-field, in the very south of the county, near the alleged roads just mentioned, is not clear. Such a name does not always imply a Roman road. Further north and on the eastern edge of the county a road has been thought to run from Conisborough in Yorkshire, through Todwick, Harthill, Clowne, Scarcliffe and Pleasley, to Skegby in Nottinghamshire. The lines of modern roads lend some slight support to this idea for a brief distance, but for the rest the evidence is very scanty and the direction and object of the route unexplained. 4 I can find equally little evidence for three roads mentioned by Mr. Watkin. One is said to run from Pentrich on Rycknield Street westward to Wirksworth, another from Wirksworth by Bakewell, Eyam and Abney Moor to Brough, and a third from Buxton straight to Melandra. 6 It is possible enough that these alleged roads, or some of them, may be Roman. But till they are systematically explored and definite evidence for them discovered, the student will do well to ignore them. Here, even more than in the rest of Romano-British archaeology, caution and criticism are imperative. For just as the epigram is true that, The worse the state the more the laws, so it might be said, The worse the archaeology the more the roads. 10. SPECIAL ITEMS AND ALPHABETICAL INDEX In the preceding sections we have surveyed all those elements of Romano-British Derbyshire which can be connected under definite heads: its forts, its warm springs, its mines, its cave-life, its roads. There remain many isolated items which do not belong to any of these sections, or which belong to them in some manner not now intelligible. These 1 Lysons (Bennet), p. ccxiv ; Derb. and Notts. N. and Q. vi. 8 1, foil. 2 Nichols, Leicestershire (1795), i- p. cxlix ; Browne, Mineral Waters of Burton ; Derb. and Notts. N. and Q. vi. 82, 98. A pier of a stone bridge found at Burton in 1903 has been call Roman, but I do not know any valid reason. 3 Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. (new series), vi. 1 6.
- Hunter, South Yorkshire ; Derby Times, 19 May, 1900.
5 Watkin, Derb. Arch. Journ. viii. 212, 214. Of the third Mr. Watkin observes that it has never been properly traced, but ' that it existed is certain.' That does not advance matters much. 251
