v Short
hand-out
v Long hand-out
v
Test
v British districts
v
Sources
Roman
Invasion
Hadrian’s Wall
In 122 A.D. the Roman Emperor Hadrian built a wall which was 20 feet high
and eight feet thick to protect Roman Britain from the wild tribes of Scotland.
It still runs for 37.5 miles between Wallsend on the North Sea and Bowness on
the Irish Sea.
The Antonine Wall in Scotland was the
northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire. The Barrier consisted of a line of
auxiliary forts and fortlets, connected by a continous rampart wall and ditch.
It was built by Antonius Pius, adopted son of Hadrian.
Streets
The Romans built paved roads all over Britain. Our word ‘street’ comes
from the Latin ‘strata’. The modern M 1 Motorway from London to Birmingham was
built along the Roman road ‘Watling Street’, which ran from Dover to Chester.
Towns
The Latin word for a fortified camp is ‘castrum’. The towns whose names
end in –chester,
-cester or –caster, such as Winchester, Worcester, Lancaster were originally
Roman settlements.
Buildings
Roman Forts were the permanent base of the Roman Army; their internal
layout follows a basic pattern. A Roman lighthouse, the oldest building in
England, can still be seen at Dover.
There are amphitheatres at Dorchester and Silchester. Parts of a Roman
temple were found in London near St. Paul’s Cathedral after the Second World
War.
All parts of the Roman Empire always had an
Emperor and the civil service structure that administered the Empire. It was
Roman policy, tho shift the burden of government upon the native leaders and
their councils.
Religion
The Romans brought Christianity to Britain. The first Christian Roman
Emperor, Constantine the Great, was proclaimed Emperor by the Roman Legions at
York in 306 A.D.
In 55 BC Caesar decided to
invade Britain. This may have been to gain back prestige home in Rome, but
Caesar feared that the defeated Gauls would slip away to their related tribes
in Britain to regroup. So, tackling the British Celts made sense in the battle
to secure Gaul for Rome. Julius Caesar returned the following summer and
defeated King Cassivellaunus, exacting a promise of tribute from the defeated
tribes. In the meantime the contacts between the Roman Empire and Celtic
England grew. AD43 Claudius decided to expand the Empire to the British Isles
and arrived with 40, 000 men at Richborough in Kent.
The Claudian invasion rapidly
brought the lowland zone of Britain under Roman control and in the 70s the conquest
of Wales was completed. In the late 70s and 80s Julius Agricola entered the
Highlands and defeated the Caledonian peoples. The limit of Roman Britain was
marked by Hadrian’s Wall in the 120s. In about the year 213 Britain was divided
into two provinces, Lower Britain in the North and Upper Britain.
1. Hadrian´s Wall
Hadrian’s Wall is not just the
most exciting relic of the Roman occupation of Britain, but perhaps the largest
and most remarkable building-programme ever undertaken in the British Isles at
any time.
ð
Hadrian’s
Wall is the prime relic of over 400 years of Roman occupation of Britain.
The concept of a permanent
frontier anywhere along the edges of the Roman Empire was relatively new.
Up to Hadrian’s reign (117 – 138), Roman frontiers were normally organised so
that peoples on the other side could cross into the Empire for legitimate and
peaceful purposes. Hadrian decided to halt the expansion of the Empire and fix
its borders.
Hadrian’s Wall was a
substantial structure intended to be a monument, as several of Hadrian’s major
projects were.
The dangers posed by the Caledonians
were of such enormous proportions that only a monumental and continuous linear
barrier of stone and earth was likely to contain them.
The main purpose of the
Wall was to provide a fixed frontier to the Roman province of Britain,
and so separate two sets of potential troublemakers, namely the Brigantes
of North England from the tribes of south Scotland.
Hadrian’s Wall was a
massive work of engineering:
Over 2 million tons of
stone and turf were used in its construction.
|
|
A 19th
century engineer estimated that 10,000 men using ox-cars and working
200 days a year would have taken the best part of two years to
complete it, without forts and milecastles.
The wall was only one edge
of the frontier. Behind the Wall, the Romans built a continuous earthwork from
Newcastle to Bowness: The Vallum.
The Vallum was “the Roman
equivalent of barbed wire”. (Breeze. Roman Britain. p.103)
The purpose of the
Vallum: it lies shortly south of the Wall and was constructed to delineate
the area under strict military control and to prevent civilians
and other unauthorized persons from wandering too close to the military zone.
|
|
After almost 300 years of
Roman occupation, Hadrian’s Wall no longer served its role as a boundary between
Roman and Barbarian and gradually fell into disuse and disrepair.
2. Antonine´s Wall
|
AD |
Antonine Wall was
built and therefore Hadrian’s Wall was evacuated. |
|
AD155: |
The Brigantes revolted
and the Antonine Wall was evacuated. A year or two
later Hadrian’s Wall was fully recommissioned |
|
AD |
Antonine Wall was
reoccupied and caretaker garrisons were on Hadrian’s frontier. |
|
AD163: |
Hadrian’s Wall again fully regarriHadrian’s Wall
again fully regarrisoned. |
Hadrian intended his Wall to
be the permanent frontier in Britain, but Antonius Pius (Emperor: 138 –
161) soon discovered that the passive attitude towards the Caledonians would
have to be abandoned.
One possible reason for the change
of Hadrian’s consolidation policy is that Antonius was under
pressure from the army to go to war.
The new Emperor waged war
against the Britons and ordered his new governor to drive them back and then to
build a second wall further up to contain them.
This time it was to be a turf
wall that was to run across the Forth-Clyde isthmus – a distance of almost 40
Roman miles (= 36.5 English miles)
A wall of turf was the standard
Roman practice for frontiers whereas the stone walling of Hadrian was exceptional.
The Antonine Wall was a more
aggressively orientated frontier, designed to provide a linear group of
garrisons in post ready to move out into Caledonian territory on the offensive
as well as the defensive.
It was also shorter, in order
to be easier to hold and defend. (Hadrian’s Wall was almost twice as long.)
3. Roman Roads
When the Romans began their
conquest of England, they found a haphazard collection of roads and paths, most
connecting local fields, but also some longer distance routes. The Roman
administration needed a better network of roads to connect its new towns and
army posts and to speed the flow of trade and troops. In building their
network of roads the Romans mostly ignored the Celtic paths, partly because the
roman towns and forts were built on new sites away from the Celtic settlements.
The most vital priority was
the movement of troops and supplies from the channel ports of Richborough,
Dover and Lympne to the military centres at London, Colchester, and the
front-line legionary forts. The first great Roman road in Britain
was the Fosse Way, extending from Exeter to Lincoln; it has been largely
adapted by modern highways.
By AD82 the Romans had pushed
north as far as a line between the Clyde and the Firth of Forth. During this
campaign the army built over 60 forts and over 1, 200 miles of roads.
They also built minor roads
to link economic centres such as the Mendip lead mines and the Nene pottery. It
is guessed that during the first hundred years of Roman occupation
between 8, 000 and 10, 000 miles of roads were constructed.
There was a third level of roads
at a local level, connecting villas, temples, farms and villages to larger
roads and market towns.The full extent of this road building is apparent when
you consider that according estimates to historians, no village or farm was
more than 7 miles from a purpose-built road.
How did the Romans build these
famous roads?
-
There
were 3 layers: first large stones, second smaller stones, on top a layer of
gravel or small stones
-
Each
layer varied in depth from 2 – 12 inches.
The choice of material
depended on what was locally available: chalk, flint, gravel. Straightness was
not alway possible in a mountainous terrain such as England. A clue to the
existence of former roman roads is the prefix “street”, as in Streatley
or Streatham. Some remains of the Roman streets can still be seen today as in
N. Yorkshire at Wheeldale Moor, some have become modern streets such as the M1
that leads along “Watling Street”.
4. Roman Towns
The Romans were the first to build
towns in Britain and each Roman town was built to a plan. Everything was
organised and orderly, streets were laid out in a criss-cross pattern,
usually with two main streets that divide the town. Smaller streets led off
these at right angles. The Roman town of Cavella Atrebatum, today Silchester,
was completely abandoned at the end of the Roman occupation of Britain.
Consequently it has never been built on and the layout survived intact. Today
the interior of Silchester is buried and laid to pasture, and apart from the
town walls and the amphitheatre there are no visible remains to be seen.Only
two other towns in England, Caistor in Norfolk and Worxeter in
Shropshire, have survived to a similar extent.
Silchester
Cirencester (hidden amphitheatre)
(www.english-heritage.org.uk)
Roman towns usually consisted
of a forum, the civic centre and the market place, and a basilica,
in the centre. A bath-house was an indispensable part of Roman life, and
examples are found in every town. The best preserved bath that still can
be seen and in which you can, even nowadays, have a swim is that of Bath.
The thermal establishment at
Bath is exceptionally grand, as it was in the centre of a major healing cult.
Romans seem to have gone there in substantial numbers, searching for relaxation
and social intercourse. Such a bath consisted of a series of rooms
heated to different temperatures.
- apodyterium
changing room
- frigidarium
cold room
- tepidarium
warm room (started to sweat)
- caldarium
room of intense sticky heat
(in here the bather
would scrape himself down, to remove dirt from the skin)
then back in reverse order, taking a dip in the cold bath to close the pores.
The rooms were heated by a hypocaust,
which we can compare with modern underfloor heating. There were also the hot
room, known as the laconicum or the sudatorium, where you
could sweat in dry heat. Swimming-baths as we know them were rare.
In Bath hot water of 46°C
rises at the rate of 1, 170 000 litres every day. In the past this natural
phenomenon was beyond human understanding and it was believed to be the work of
the gods. A great temple was built next to the spring dedicated to the goddess Sulis
Minervae, a deity with healing powers.
Other public buildings within
a town included temples, a mansio or inn (partly for the use of officials
travelling on public business) and sometimes theatres. And, of course, private
houses.
5. Roman Forts
Forts were the permanent bases
of the Roman army; their size varies according to the type of garrison, but
most forts cover between 2 ½ and 4 acres. Their internal layout is nearly
invariable and follows the same basic pattern. The camp was divided into three
main areas:
*
Praetorium
situated at the geometric centre of the camp, this area was where the
commander´s tent was pitched and the military standards grounded.
*
Praetentura
the forward part of the camp closest to the enemy, where the cream of the Roman
soldiers were barracked.
* Retentura
the rearward part of the camp which housed the remaining cohorts.
The
areas within the camp were delimited by a number of roads:
*
Via
Sagularis
ran round the complete circuit of the camp
*
Via Praetoria
led from the Praetorium toward the enemy, bisecting the Praetentura.
*
Via Decumana ran from
behind the Praetorium towards the rear gate, bisecting the Retentura
*
Via Principalis ran
in front of the Praetorium at right angles to the Via Praetoria, separating the
Praetorium from the Praetentura in the forward part of the camp.
*
Via
Quintana
ran at right angles to the via decumana, separating the Praetorium from the
Retentura.
The
defences were pierced by gateways, usually four:
*
Porta Praetoria main
entrance to the camp, was placed in the centre of the defenses facing the
direction from which any potential danger would arise.
*
Porta Decumana situated at the rear of the
camp, opposite the Praetorian gate. In smaller forts this gate was not present.
*
Portae Principali these gates were
situated at the sides of the encampment, usually placed forward of the central
point of the defences at either side of the via principalis.
*
Portae Quintanae if present, they were situated
at the sides of the defensive circuit, again off-set from the centre, towards
the rear at either end of the via quintana
6. The Pharos
The Pharos was one of two
lighthouses built to guide the Roman fleet of the Classis Britannica into
the harbour of Dover, then known as Dubris. The Eastern Pharos stands to a
height of 13 metres within the grounds of Dover castle, which makes it the
tallest surviving Roman building in Britain. It`s overall width is
approximately twelve metres, and it may once have stood to a height of 24
metres comprising eight stages. Each stage stepped in about thirty centimetres
to give the lighthouse a telescopic appearance. As it stands today only
the first four Romans stages survive. A similar pharos stood at the western end
of Dover town but there only the foundations remain. The towers date from the
first century AD, but most of what is visible is medieval.
The Roman fleet began building
a fort at Dover at around AD117, but it was probaly never finished although the
remains of a fort wall and three barrack blocks were discovered during rescue
archeology in 1970.The fort was occupied until AD155 and then abandoned until
the next period of occupation from AD190 to AD208. After that period it was allowed
to decay. By AD 270 many of the buildings had collapsed an were covered with
soil.
7. Government of Roman Britain
Whatever else the numerous
nations and peoples had or did not have as members of the Roman Empire, they
always had an Emperor and they had the civil service structure
that administered the Empire.
It was Roman policy, once a
territory had been conquered or annexed to shift the burden of
government as far as possible upon the native leaders and their councils,
retaining of course overall supervision.
The Claudian settlement of AD
43 also brought the province within the writ of Roman law and absorbed it into
the Roman system of taxation.
It was not simply a question
of one law for the whole province. Those Britans who were not Roman citizens (peregrini)
were still allowed to have their own Celtic codes where they were not in flat
contradiction to Roman law.
The Celts in Britain did not
develop towns. Therefore the Romans had to introduce the concept of urban life
and to get the British to accept it.
They began to establish coloniae:
Towns specifically intended only for Roman citizens, retired army veterans,
emigrants from Italy, traders and craftsman (Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln,
York).
The Romans also created municipia:
Towns for people with Roman or Latin citizenship usually formed out of existing
settlements, such as St Albans and London.
And for the tribes themselves,
the Romans created tribal cities or towns, known as civitas capitals, one
for each tribe, which were responsible for the whole tribal area.
Apart from the few coloniae,
municipia and civitas capitals, there were many smaller
settlements which are called vici.
Vicus: - settlement that
grew up round a fort
-
suburb
of a large town
-
small
town that later became a civitas capital
This vicus may be
related to the former urban district councils that used to be a feature of
English local government structure before 1974.
The threads of local
government that have been woven into the fabric of British history since early
Anglo-Saxon times owe something of their origins to the Roman-British system.
8. Religion
When the Roman army came to
Britain it encountered new mythologies among the British tribes and in
time, many of the Roman and Celtic gods became linked.
In addition the Romans
introduced their own Emperor Worship, a vital unifying force in the
Empire.
The Roman government was generally
tolerant of the religious beliefs and rituals of the peoples it
administered.
Yet there were two sects to
which it took strong exception:
-
druidism
-
Christianity
-
(Judaism).
The druids were wont to
publicise gloomy prophecies. If these reached the ears of the troops or
officials of the occupying forces, they could affect morals.
By refusing to worship
at the altar of Rome and the Emperor, Christians were breaking the law.
Constantine the Great (306 –
337) granted Christianity official toleration throughout the Empire, by
the Edict of Milan in 313.
-
Watling
Street
-
Fosse
Way
-
Hadrian’s
Wall
-
Antonine’s
Wall
Throughout much of
the present century local government in most areas of the United Kingdom consisted
of two tiers, each with their own responsibilities. The
upper-tier authorities were the county councils and the lower-tier
consisted of a multiplicity of city, borough, urban district, rural
district and metropolitan district councils. A number of cities and towns,
however, had a single tier of local government and were not dependent on the
county councils in any way. These cities and towns were those granted the
status of "County Borough" or of "County of itself"
or, in Scotland, of "County of a City" and they formed what
were effectively independent islands within the geographic counties.
Most county council boundaries corresponded with those of the geographic
counties, but there were some exceptions, namely Yorkshire, Lincolnshire,
Suffolk and Sussex, where the geographic counties were served by two or three
County Councils. London, as ever, was another exception. London proper, the
City of London, was and is only the one square mile on the north bank of
the Thames where the Bank of England and other financial institutions are located.
The county of London, however, covered some 116 square miles but it was of
comparatively recent origin, having been formed in 1899 from the City and
chunks of the surrounding counties of Middlesex, Kent and Surrey. Around the
county of London was a rather ill-defined and constantly growing area known as
Greater London.
The first of the far reaching changes took place in
1965 with the formal recognition of the previously vague concept of Greater
London. On April 1st 1965 the Greater London Council was constituted
covering an area which comprised the former counties of London and Middlesex
together with parts of Essex, Kent, Surrey and Hertfordshire, including three
former County Boroughs, Croydon, West Ham and East Ham. The second-tier within
this area, which had previously consisted of no fewer than 82 borough,
metropolitan and urban district councils, was reorganized into 33 sub-divisions
- 32 London Boroughs and the City of London.
Next, on October 1st 1973, came some changes affecting
Northern Ireland. The 73 existing
councils (6 upper-tier county councils, 2 single-tier county boroughs, and 65
lower-tier councils comprising 10 boroughs, 24 urban districts and 31 rural
districts) were replaced by 26 single-tier District Councils. For
administrative purposes at least, the six historic counties were no more.
Six months later, on April 1st 1974, it was the
turn of England and Wales (apart from Greater London). Here the two-tier
structure was to remain, in fact it was to be extended to include even the
special-status areas which had previously enjoyed an independent existence. The
overall effects were (1) to abolish County Boroughs, (2) to
reduce number of upper-tier county councils from 58 to 53, (3) to
replace the 1250 lower-tier councils with 369 District Councils. Six of the
53 county councils which served major conurbation's were to be Metropolitan
County Councils and the 36 district councils within these areas were to be
termed Metropolitan District Councils. These changes resulted in the disappearance
of several historic counties and most others had major boundary changes.
Learning English, Neue Ausgabe A, Teil 2. Ed. Karl Beilhardt, Hans-Joachim Lechler, Willy Piert.
Ernst
Klett Verlag Stuttgart. 1967.
Salway, Peter.
The Oxord Illustrated History
Of Roman Britain. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press:
1993.(Freihand Ausleihbestand 34A/18630)
Sommerset Fry, Plantagenet.
Roman Britain. Ed. David & Charles
Ltd. Butler & Tanner Ltd. Frome, London. 1984 (UB 24A/18817)
Wilson, Roger J.A.
A Guide to the Roman Remains
in Britain. With a foreword by J.M.C. Toynbee.London: Constable, 1975. (UB
16A/5963)
Woodside, Robert; and James Crow.
Hadrian´s Wall: An Historic
Landscape. London: National Trust, 1999. (UB 13E/9337)
http://www.roman-britain.org
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk
http://www.traceit.com/gazette/0ct.5.html
Pictures
Antonine`s
Wall
The Oxford Illustrated History
Of Roman Britain, 140
Bath
The Oxford Illustrated History
Of Roman Britain, 348
General Layout of a
Roman Camp
http://www.roman-britain.org/places/images/_roman_camp.gif.
Second Century Britain
The
Oxford Illustrated History of Roman Britain, 124
The Road System of Roman Britain
The
Oxford Illustrated History of Roman Britain, 380
The Roman lighthouse at Dover
http://www.roman-britain.org/places/images/dubris.jpg
