Roman Britain / by R.G. Collingwood.

  • R. G. Collingwood
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Roman Britain / by R.G. Collingwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to the sea, and at the end of every day’s march was a fort. Close to the Wall itself there were towns, Carlisle and Corbridge; but they were military bases and supply depots, not civilian com¬ munities. From this rough sketch of the distribution of sites in Roman Britain it is clear that to acquaint ourselves with the civil popula¬ tion of the province we must look at a U-shaped tract of country running down the Severn valley and south through Somerset to Dorset, thence east to Kent and thence north by London and East Anglia to Lincolnshire. In this tract we shall find a large number of towns—an ancient authority ascribes fifty-nine towns to Britain, but he may have been including the forts of the north in this figure—and a vast number of country-houses; but we shall only select an example of each of the main types. London, which ever since the Roman conquest has been over¬ whelmingly the greatest town in England, seems strangely enough to have been of purely Roman origin. There is no positive proof that London existed before the Romans discovered the natural advantages of the site, with its unrivalled combination of land and water communications, for a mercantile city. But once founded it leapt into prominence. Before the rebellion of Bou- dicca, when it was destroyed, it was already a large and flourishing settlement of Italian and Gaulish traders; unwalled and ungarri¬ soned ; situated probably between the Tower and the Walbrook, which flowed where the Bank stands. It soon recovered from Boudicca’s massacre, and extended westward till it occupied an area of 320 to 330 acres, which makes it not only one of the largest towns of the Roman Empire but gives it a population large in proportion to its size, for almost the whole area was covered with buildings. In the third century it acquired the name of Augusta, and towards the end of that century we can probably date the building of its massive walls, twenty feet high and 8 ft. 6 in. thick, whose course has been traced round almost their entire
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