ROMANO-BRITISH LONDON
traced in several lengths of straight road between Ware and Kingsland, and the line so given meets the Thames opposite Stoney Lane,[1] which is approximately in the same line as the existing portion of Ermine Street on Leatherhead Downs. The course of these two portions of the road is alone sufficient evidence that there was a passage over the river at this point, and the locality answers well enough to the vague description by Dio Cassius:
the Britons retreated to the river Thames where it empties itself into the ocean[2] and becomes an estuary at high tide; and easily passed it as they were well acquainted with those parts that were firm and fordable.[3]
Before it was embanked the Thames at this point may easily have been mistaken for an estuary; and though the salt water is many miles below London at the present day,[4] the 'bridge a little higher up'[5] shows that the British ford cannot have been much below the site suggested, where the Ermine Street reached either bank. Further, it has been pointed out by Sir G. B. Airy[6] that a ford at this point would have been quite practicable at low water:
Of the depth of the Thames proper opposite London we have good evidence in the depth of the foundations of the piers of old London Bridge. A cross-section of the river at that point is given in Archaeologia, xxiii, 118. It appears from this that the lowest part of the rubble, on which were laid the wooden sleepers supporting the masonry, was only from two to three feet below low water. It is certain that this could not be higher than the general bed of the river, and it probably would be lower. … Some channels naturally would be deeper than the general bed; and these, when the tide had risen a little, would make the operation of fording very dangerous.
Burials both north and south of the river support this view of the Ermine Street. The extensive Roman cemetery near the chapel in Deverell Street is seen to occupy the angle made with the Watling Street, and the interments discovered in Mark Lane, Goring Street (Castle Street), Camomile Street, Liverpool Street Station and Bishopsgate fall naturally into position on either side of this line. Further, the leaden cinerary from Fenchurch Street may be satisfactorily located on this hypothesis, and the marble cover of a tomb[7] found in association with a coin of Constantine II (317—40) near the west door of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, may after all have been approximately in situ.
The same method enables us to reconstruct the line of the Roman highway running west from Essex. Its course is fairly obvious from the map, and if the line from Romford through Queen Street (north-east of Barking) and past Little Ilford and Old Ford stations be produced, it will be found to reach the Fleet at Holborn Bridge. The point at which it crosses the Lea is, moreover, the exact site of an interesting discovery made a few years ago during dredging operations for the Lea Conservancy. Below Old Ford lock, opposite the
- ↑ Corresponding to Stanegate at Lambeth, a paved approach to the river. Between Dorking and Chichester the road itself is called Stane Street.
- ↑ Cæsar describes Kent as surrounded by the sea (omnis maritima), and knew of no bridge over the lower Thames (De Bello Gallico, v, 18); and Ptolemy gives London as a city of the Cantii. See on the whole question Knight, London, i, 147 (Craik); Arch. xxix, 160 (Roach Smith).
- ↑ Hist. lx, 20.
- ↑ The limit of the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction as conservator of the Thames is 41 miles below London Bridge, and that line may be roughly regarded as the head of the estuary, just west of the mouth of the Midway.
- ↑ The distance would be 2¼ miles.
- ↑ Essays on Invasion of Britain, &c. 56; Athenaeum, 28 Jan. 1860.
- ↑ Lond. and Midd. Arch. Soc. Trans. v, 413. This type is common in Italy.
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