ROMANO-BRITISH WARWICKSHIRE it runs through Warwickshire ; at Fazeley it crosses the Tame into Staffordshire. Constant use through many centuries has presumably destroyed almost everywhere its Roman paving. There is however a story that during the sewerage works at Atherstone in 1868 the old Roman paving was found at varying depths, marked with grooves of chariot-wheels and laid in slabs like those in the Forum of Rome. What truth underlies this tale is impossible and perhaps unimportant to dis- cover. Certainly no such paving as that of the Via Sacra at Rome has been found elsewhere in Roman Britain, and slab-paving of any sort is rare on Romano-British roads. (3) The Fosse is the name used since Saxon times for the road or series of roads which ran from Lincoln past Leicester, Cirencester and Bath into the west. Its general course is no less certain than that of Watling Street. In Warwickshire it is still for the most part used as a road or field-track ; for about half its course it forms intermittently a parish boundary. It enters the county at High Cross, passes Street Ashton, Stretton-under-Fosse, Brinklow (where perhaps later earthworks have been thrown across it), Chesterton and Halford, and leaves the county at Stretton-on-the-Fosse. Except at Chesterton, and perhaps at Halford (p. 246), it traverses no sites known to have been inhabited in Romano-British times. The Romans seem to have drawn some distinction between the Fosse from Lincoln to High Cross and the Fosse from High Cross southwards. The former belonged to an itinerary route from Lincoln to London ; the latter has no place in the Itinerary. The reason is not now discoverable with certainty. It can hardly be connected with any distinction between military and commercial roads for which distinction there seems, indeed, to be no proper warrant. But it suggests that the Romans did not regard the Fosse quite as we are inclined to do that is, as a great through route from Lincolnshire into Somerset. It did serve that end, but in Roman times that was not its principal purpose. (4) Lastly, we have to mention two branch roads, both short and doubtful. Possibly a road connected Alcester and Droitwich, though the assertions often made about it are too positive and the appellation often given to it, Lower Saltway, seems devoid of ancient authority. The line of the existing highway between the two towns, both Roman sites, is really the only evidence, and this, though not adverse, is not conclusive in favour of the road. Another road may perhaps have run from Alcester to Stratford. The existing highway between the two places is singularly straight, and where it once diverges (near Alcester) the straight line is taken up by a field-track. Moreover the name of Stratford, as Mr. Stevenson assures me, is genuinely old and may really indicate a Roman road. Unfortunately hardly any Roman remains, except coins, have been found in or near Stratford (p. 248) ; and, sup- posing the road to be Roman, there is no sort of indication of its further course east of Stratford. On the other hand we may reject without scruple the idea of a Roman road from Alcester to Warwick. No trace 243
