Category Archives: Chester

The 1854 turnpike from Chester to Worthenbury via Churton, with a branch to Farndon – Part 1, Background

Turnpikes and tolls from the 17th to 19th Centuries

Although the wheel had been known from around 1000 BC during the later Bronze Age, for much of British prehistory and early history the easiest means of transporting goods was by water, either coastal or riverine. Travel over land was much more challenging until at least the 16th Century, even though the Romans, with their superior planning and engineering, may appear to give lie to that statement. Prior to Roman roads and once again following the withdrawal of Rome in the 5th Century, the condition of tracks and roads was fairly grim.

From Tudor and Stuart times the responsibility for roads had fallen on the parish or township. The Highways Act of 1555 set this down in law. Members of the parish were obliged to contribute labour and equipment for repairs, in batches of consecutive days. For parishes in rural areas with no major byways this was not necessarily a problem, but parishes that hosted major routes were victim to very unfair financial burdens and the condition of roads from one parish to another became very inconsistent. During the 16th and 17th Centuries matters deteriorated as oxen- and horse-drawn waggons and carts replaced packhorses, and carriages capable of travelling longer distances became more common. In the first half of the 16th century the long wheelbase waggon had been introduced, which allowed much heavier cargoes to be carried. The Highways Act of 1662 included measures to try to reduce the damage to major highways by prohibiting the use of more than 7 horse teams to pull vehicles, and by banning the use of wagons with wheel widths that were in excess of 4 inches.

The London to Birmingham Stage Coach by John Cordrey, 1801. Source: Birmingham in the 18th Century

Carriages and coaches were a particular phenomenon of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, when improvements in design, particularly improving ride by use of spring-loaded, shock-absorbing suspension and much better reliability via improved wheel design meant that both public and private transportation was much more common, faster, and could be pulled by more horses, all of which inflicted damage on roads. Post, mail coaches and stage coaches began to offer a network of passenger travel across Britain. Pratt gives the following statistics:

Over 3000 coaches were then on the road, and half of these began or ended their journeys in London. Some 150,000 horses were employed in running them, and there were about 30,000 coachmen, guards, horse-keepers and hostlers, while many hundreds of taverns, in town or country, prospered on the patronage the coaches brought them. From one London tavern alone there went every day over eighty coaches to destinations in the north. From another there went fifty-three coaches and fifty-one waggons, chiefly to the west of England. Altogether coaches or waggons were going from over one hundred taverns in the City or in the Borough.

The development of the turnpike network from 1741 to 1770. Source: Langford 2000, p.34-5

The state of roads in England and Wales became so poor that some were almost impassable in the winter. Connections between villages and market towns were threatened, some becoming virtually cut off in bad weather. Collection of rents became difficult and long distance trade was always in jeopardy in some regions. This situation was aggravated during the 18th Century as the population expanded, and the demand for goods and produce increased. As the Industrial Revolution gained momentum and coal, building materials, textiles and more food began to be needed all over the country as well as for export markets, cargoes were moved both locally to town markets, and then on to river and canal wharves and coastal ports and for transport over long distances and people travelled far more widely on business.

To take control of important routes, and place the cost of maintenance on the users rather than the parish through which they passed, turnpike trusts were set up to manage the rebuilding of existing bits of the road network and to construct new linking sections of road. An initial experiment was set up in Lincolnshire in 1663, and in 1706 an Act of Parliament established a turnpike along a stretch of the A5, that became a model for future turnpikes. The first of these turnpikes, or toll roads, were rolled out during the 18th and early 19th centuries, peaking in the early 1800s. The Acts of Parliament that were required to establish a turnpike endured for a fixed period, initially of 21 years. When this period expired, the Act could be renewed or permitted to lapse (“disturnpiked”). In 1741 new legislation gave trustees the right to install weigh-bridges, and any load over 3 tons carried a surcharge.

The Rebecca Riots. Illustrated London News 1843

Tolls were payable by users of the turnpikes to foot the bill for them in the long term, with toll rates based on usage of the road. This meant that the cost of maintaining the road fell on those who used it, much like modern road tax, rather than on the often landless and impoverished members of the parish. A single person on horseback would pay much less than someone taking animals or a cart of goods for sale at market. Again, it’s a bit like modern road tax where a four-wheel-drive or a van is charged at a higher rate than a small runabout. Some people were exempt from tolls, including those attending church on a Sunday, clergymen, voters attending elections, mail coaches and funerals. Local gentry were not exempt, and nor was farm traffic. Although often very unpopular, penalties for damaging turnpikes began as whippings and up to three months imprisonment but were escalated, as protests increased, to include the possibility of deportation. This did not prevent a number of protests and even riots being organized, mostly by farmers. The best known of these are the Welsh Rebecca Riots of 1839-1843, when farmers dressed up as women to avoid identification, but there had been many earlier examples too. Most everyday personal protests took the form of attempting to cheat the toll or evade it entirely, rather than inflicting any physical damage. Toll cheating was a favourite pastime.

Others, however, were much more enthusiastic. Daniel Defoe, writing in 1725, was a fan. Travelling around Britain and writing his “A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain” he described one section along Watling Street in ecstatic terms: “The bottom is not only repaired, but the narrow places are widened, hills levelled, bottoms raised and the ascents and descents made easy.”

Each new turnpike trust was authorized by an individual Act of Parliament, which initially lasted for 21 years, after which they could be renewed until the decision was made after the first half of the 19th Century to allow all turnpikes Acts to expire. The turnpike trusts were composed of local landowners and dignitaries, including clergy and the new class of professional men that included ambitious local merchants and manufacturers. Although the trustees were not paid, it was absolutely in their interests to improve the economic infrastructure of their particular areas.

The trustees in turn appointed salaried officers, such as solicitors and bankers, to do the actual work of building and maintaining the road and managing the collection of tolls. Turnpikes helped to establish reliable timetables and improved the dependability of the mail. Ribbon developments grew up along them, particularly as they headed out of a town, or passed through a major intersection, and new coaching inns were established to meet the needs of passengers, horses and carriage crew. In 1745 it had taken a fortnight to reach Edinburgh from London, but by 1796 this had been reduced to two and a half days, and by 1830 just 36 hours. By the end of 1750 there were 166 turnpike trusts covering 3400 miles / 5500km. By the 1870s turnpikes covered 19,000 road miles (30,000km).

Most turnpikes simply repaired existing roads and others reinvented existing roads in terms of their construction, sometimes rerouting them. Only occasionally were entirely new roads were built. The Chester to Worthenbury stretch was somewhere between the first two of these, improving the road surface and drainage whilst maintaining the original width and route of the old road.

The main activities required for the establishment of a turnpike were hard-surfacing and draining as well as signposting. The surfacing was required to prevent animals and cart and carriage wheels from carving up the roads, and drainage, as the Romans had discovered, was required to maintain the surface and prevent it reverting to deeply indented mud. Edwin Pratt’s 1912 study of inland transport (an invaluable source of information for this post), was most unflattering about the quality of the turnpikes before Thomas Telford and particularly John Loudon MacAdam began to standardize a better, reliable way of surfacing roads:

Although a vast amount of road-making or road-repairing was going on, at the very considerable expense of the road users, and to the advantage of a small army of attorneys, officials and labourers, it was not road-making of a scientific kind, but merely amateur work, done at excessive cost, either with unintelligent zeal or in slovenly style, and yielding results which mostly failed to give the country the type of road it required for the ever-increasing traffic to which expanding trade, greater travel, and heavier and more numerous waggons and coaches were leading. Before the adoption of scientific road-making, the usual way of forming a new road was, first to lay along it a collection of large stones, and then to heap up thereon small stones and road dirt in such a way that the road assumed the shape of the upper half of an orange, the convexity often being so pronounced that vehicles kept along the summit of the eminence because it was dangerous for them, especially in rainy weather, to go along the slope on either side.

John McAdam. Engraving by Charles Turner. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

This was probably not true of all turnpikes, but was clearly valid in a daunting number of cases. In the early 19th Century McAdam’s first insight was that road surfaces needed to be impermeable so that water did not pass through to the soil beneath and begin to run away, collapse and otherwise undermine the road above. His second insight was that stones laid as road surfaces should be broken and angular, not rounded, so that when subjected to the weight of traffic they would consolidate, compact and bear weight. He ran successful experiments to test his ideas. This was the first strategic and standardized approach to road building in Britain since the Romans left.

Signage, much like the M6 Toll today, advertized the presence of a turnpike, and promoted its use, but also showed routes to villages along roads with which it intersected. A gate was set up and a toll cottage or at the very least a hut was usually built.

Milestones

1898 milepost, just to the north of Churton (my photo, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Milestones or mileposts were set from the first half of the 17th Century onwards, starting in southeast England, mainly for the benefit of mail coaches and other passenger vehicles. Turnpikes were encouraged to install them from the 1740s and in 1766 became obligatory when it was found that as well as being useful for coachmen and passengers, it enabled accurate measuring of distances for the pricing of different routes. It also helped to improve improved the reliability of timetables, something to which the turnpikes themselves, had enabled, particularly relevant in bad weather.

There are some very fine milestones dotted along the road along the line of the old Chester to Worthenbury turnpike, but all are dated to 1898, two decades after the expiration date of the 1854 Act. They were erected by Chester County Council after it had accepted responsibility for the road. A forthcoming post will talk about the milestones. Sadly, if there were original milestones belonging to the 1854-1876 Chestser to Worthenbury turnpike, which in theory there should have been, none remain. They may have been removed when the 1898 ones were put in place. Looking around online for earlier mileposts in Cheshire, they were all made of stone, some of sandstone, engraved with the mileage details, and some are badly eroded. Perhaps some fallen and lost ones will eventually turn up.

I am keeping a record of all the surviving 1898 mileposts, as I find them, and the condition that they are in on another post, here.

The end of the turnpikes

Arguments that turnpikes were an impediment to free trade were also beginning to be heard, and national infrastructure was gradually coming under more active government control. The Local Government Act of 1888 put responsibility of roads into the hands of local councils, at which point many of the turnpikes became redundant, although sections 92-98 of the 1888 Act provided for some exclusions.

Railways of England and Wales 1825-1914. Source: Harvie and Matthew 2000

According to Crosby, by the mid 19th Century the network of turnpikes in Cheshire covered around 590 miles. As the the railways began to cover more parts of the country, far more efficient at transporting both people and cargoes, including livestock, turnpikes were no longer as important. In the 1840s, as railways took off, income from tolls fell dramatically. From this time forward, and particularly from the 1860s, as turnpikes came up for renewal most were allowed to lapse, and the government decided to referred to as “disturnpiked.” In 1895 the last of the turnpikes closed down.

Some villages that had been bypassed by a major turnpike, suddenly became economically prosperous when railways were run through them. For example, Aberdovey, a small but important port for the coastal trade in mid-West Wales (known to many of today’s West Cheshire residents for its golf course), was bypassed when an east-west turnpike was built following the Merioneth Turnpike Act of 1775, but when the railway arrived in the middle of the 19th Century it became an increasingly important port for the transportation of Irish livestock, and became a popular destination for tourists. Rail fares began to undercut stagecoaches and were faster, and the stagecoaches rapidly went out of business as the reach of the railway network grew. Most of the last turnpike survivors had become feeders to the railways.

However, one of the major reasons for turnpikes being disturnpiked was that they were always something of a headache. Construction methods were not standardized until very late (and then only if the trust chose to go down that particular path), and care was highly variable. Pratt puts this down in part to the way in which labour was sourced:

Managed or directed by trustees and surveyors . . . the actual work on the turnpike roads was mainly carried out by statute labour, pauper labour or labour paid for out of the tolls, out of the receipts from the composition for statute duty, or, as a last resource, at the direct cost of the ratepayers, who were thus made responsible for the turnpike as well as for the parish roads. Statute labour was a positive burlesque of English local government. Archdeacon Plymley says in his “General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire” (1803): “There is no trick, evasion or idleness that shall be deemed too mean to avoid working on the road: sometimes the worst horses are sent; at others a broken cart, or a boy, or an old man past labour, to fill: they are sometimes sent an hour or two too late in the morning, or they leave off much sooner than the proper time, unless the surveyor watch the whole day.

The milestone outside Glebe Farm, part way between Churton and Aldford

The piecemeal organization of the turnpikes meant that they served local interests but only sometimes contributed to long-distance travel and communication. Even on a region by region basis, there were big gaps in good quality road infrastructure because a county as a whole was not of much interest to local trusts. This significant failing in centralized strategy for inland communications was something that the government knew it needed to address, particularly as manufacturing became increasingly industrialized, demand grew and merchants wanted better access to a much wider geographical choice of markets. In a period of expanding opportunities and spending power, turnpikes had helped to improve conditions for the economy and for passengers, but they had simply never been able to meet the needs imposed on them by the late 19th Century.

For two centuries turnpikes had been essential to the support of local links and longer distant trade and travel. The toll houses established were usually added at each end of a turnpike and sometimes in between, and some of those remain dotted around this and neighbouring counties. Some of the mileposts and signposts also continue to be dotted around the modern rural landscape. When Cheshire County Council was formed on 1st January 1889, it inherited an excellent network of roads linking all its key towns and villages, most of which had been turnpikes and soon began to position its own mileposts on major highways, many of them former turnpikes.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions
or if you have additional information to contribute

Part 2 can be found here

Sources for Parts 1 and 2:

Books and papers:

An Act for making a Turnpike Road from Chester, by Farndon, to Worthenbury, with a Branch therefrom to the Village of Farndon, 1854

Benford, M. 2002. Milestones. Shire Publications

Crane, N. 2016. The Making of the British Landscape. From Ice Age to the Present. Weidenfeld and Nicholson

Crosby, A.G. 2012. New Roads for Old. Cheshire Turnpikes in the Landscape 1700-1850. In (eds.) Varey, S.M. and White, G.J. Landscape History Discoveries in the North West. University of Chester Press, p.190-223.

Cunningham Glen, R. 1895. Indictment presented before Lord Coleridge, C.J. Reg. vs. Barker. Reports of Cases in Criminal Law argued and determined in the courts of England and Ireland, vol.XVII, 1890-1895. Reported by R. Cunnigham Glen Esq., Barrister at Law. Horace Cox

Defoe, D. 1724–1726 (Rogers, P. ed.). A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain Penguin (particularly, Volume II, 1725, and its appendix).

Harvie, C. and Matthew, H.C.G. 1984, 2000. Nineteenth Century Britain. Oxford University Press

Hindle, P. 1998 (3rd edition). Medieval Roads and Tracks. Shire Publications Ltd

Keys, D. 2016. Discovery of huge Bronze Age wheel sheds light on transport in prehistoric Britain. The Independent, Friday 19th February 2016
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/prehistoric-britain-discovery-bronze-age-wheel-archaeology-a6882671.html

Langford, P. 1984, 2000. Eighteenth Century Britain. Oxford University Press

Latham, F.A. 1981. Farndon. The History of a Cheshire Village. Local History Group.

Local Government Act 1888 (51 and 52 Vict. c.41). Section 97, Saving as to liability for main roads.

OS Landranger map 117 2016. Chester and Wrexham. Ordnance Survey

Phillips, A.D.M. and Phillips, C.B. 2002. A New Historical Atlas of Cheshire. Cheshire County Council and Cheshire Community Council Publications Trust.

Pratt, E.A. 1912. A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co Ltd.
Project Gutenburg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52087/52087-h/52087-h.htm

Pryor, F. 2010. The Making of the British Landscape. How We Have Transformed the Land from Prehistory to Today. Allen Lane

Wright, G. N. 1992. Turnpike Roads. Shire Publications Ltd.

Websites

A Collection of Directories for Cheshire
Cheshire County Council
http://cheshiredirectories.manuscripteye.com/index.htm

British Listed Buildings
Cross Cottage, Churton
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101228714-cross-cottage-churton

Broughton Hall, Threapwood
Threapwood History Group
http://www.threapwoodhistory.org/broughtonhall.html

Cheshire Tithe Maps Online
Cheshire Archives and Local Studies
https://maps.cheshireeast.gov.uk/tithemaps/

Emral Hall, Worthenbury
Wrexham Online
https://www.wrexham-history.com/emral-hall-worthenbury/

Historic England
Cross Cottage, Churton
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1228714

Dig Diary 19: Discovering Britain’s Oldest, Complete Wheel
February 29, 2016
Must Farm Dig Diaries
http://www.mustfarm.com/progress/site-diary-19-discovering-britains-oldest-complete-wheel/

National Archives
Chester and Whitchurch Turnpikes Trust
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/11e8a8d6-43c5-4704-a93b-58fe6d0444a6

National Library of Scotland Mapfinder
OS 6-inch map, 1888-1913
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=15&lat=53.09734&lon=-2.86868&layers=6&b=1

Peterborough Archaeology
Must Farm Bronze Age Settlement
https://peterborougharchaeology.org/peterborough-archaeological-sites/must-farm/

Turnpike Roads in England and Wales
Turnpikes.org.uk
http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/Tollhouse%20design.htm

A touch of Rome just east of Churton #2 – The Walk

Leave a reply

Yesterday I went to find the section of the Roman road that runs from Chester, through Aldford, and down to the east of Churton. The Roman road that starts in Chester and passes to the east of Churton is Margary’s road number 6a, also known as Watling Street West. On the Cheshire West and Chester’s Public Map Viewer, the section of it that passes through Aldford and passes Churton is public footpath “Aldford FP8.” I described the background to Roman Chester and the British road system yesterday, in part 1. The walk I took to find the traces of the road on the ground is the subject of this post, part 2.

The Roman road that starts in Chester and passes to the east of Churton is Margary’s road number 6a, also known as Watling Street West. On the Cheshire West and Chester’s Public Map Viewer, the section of it that passes through Aldford and passes Churton is public footpath “Aldford FP8.”

Plan from David Mason’s comprehensive book “Roman Chester. City of the Eagles,” 2007, p.50. My annotations in colour, picking out structures mentioned in the text that flank Watling Street West on the start of its route to Aldford, Churton, Whitchurch and beyond. Click image to enlarge.

By AD 200, after repairs and reconstruction, with new buildings added, Deva had fulfilled all of its architect’s original hopes, and plans of the fortress at this time allow reconstruction of the first part of the original route from fortress. On today’s city plan the route of Watling Street West begins at the Chester Cross, at the head of Bridge Street. The Bridge Street stretch of the road within the fortress walls was called the Via Praetoria. The fortress headquarters (principia) and neighbouring legionary commander’s residence (praetorium) would have been located here, behind the Chester Cross, facing down Bridge Street. The building housing the Victoria pub (with a toast to our friend Jack), and the neighbouring St Peter’s Church both sit over parts of the the principia and praetorium.

Proceeding down the Via Praetoria, flanked first by the scamun tribunorum (senior officer’s quarters) on each side and then by the thermae (bath-house) on one side, and what may have been the valetudinarium (hospital) on the other side, a traveller would have crossed the Via Sagularis that ran along the inner edge of the rampart. At that point he or she would have been stopped at a large stone gateway mid-way along the southern wall of the fort, the Porta Praetoria, which would have been one of four substantial defensive checkpoints for those going in and out. Sadly, the gateway was destroyed when the Medieval defences were extended. From here, the route passed down the path of Lower Bridge Street, crossing a bridge over the Dee into what is now Handbridge and was then a canabae legionis (civilian suburb) that sprawled beyond the fortress walls.

A section of the route of 6a from Aldford to Churton – LiDAR and Ordnance Survey. Click to see the bigger image. Source:
Roads of Roman Britain online gazetteer.

Once the bridge was crossed and the canabae legionis traversed, a left-hand turn down Eaton Road follows the path of 6a/Watling Street West to Eccleston. Much of the line of the road from here is shown both on the LiDAR (remote sensing) image and the corresponding Ordnance Survey map (from the Roads of Roman Britain website). Some 2km (1.2 miles) to the south of Chester, the road passed through Heronbridge (once a large Roman civil settlement on the west bank of the Dee), before crossing the Dee again, at Aldford. A Roman presence at such crossings, such as a fortlet, roadside inn (mansio) or way-station (mutatio) was not unusual, but to date there is no evidence for any such installation at Aldford.

From Aldford the road passed to the east of Churton and the Roman works at Holt, which were on the west side of the Dee. There was no bridge but the river could be forded at low tide. There is currently no evidence that a Roman site was established at or near Farndon on the eastern bank of the river. The road continued on its way from east of Churton through Tilston and Malpas before reaching Whitchurch (Mediolanum). From Whitchurch, another stretch of Roman road ran to Wroxeter (Virconium Cornoviorum) and from there travellers could proceed either southeast to London (Londinium) or Colchester (Camulodunum), and from these bases to the rest of Europe, or south to Caerwent (Venta Siluris).

A second and short stretch of road into this long section to the north of Churton at Aldford, and is also shown on the above map. In Ivan Margary’s scheme, this stretch of is 6aa. The route had been proposed during the 19th Century, but was not confirmed until recently. Although much of the route is under modern development, sections of the proposed section of road were identified by LiDAR, confirming that the road headed south through Huntington to Alford. LiDAR also revealed what is thought to be a previously unknown Roman camp fort along the path of that road. LiDAR, a remote sensing method, has become invaluable for revealing sub-surface features without excavation.

The map on the right is from the online Cheshire West and Chester Public Map Viewer

The red arrow shows the line of FP8, the footpath that runs along a stretch of the original Roman road, Watling Street West (also Margary’s 6a). Although I did a circular walk, along the footpaths marked by the arrows, the photographs below show only the Roman section of my walk, between Aldford and the section of the roadway that runs east of Churton. I will post photographs of the full circular walk that incorporated the Roman section in the next couple of days. There is nothing particularly Roman about it, apart from the broad width of the track and the fairly straight route that it takes, but it makes a very fine walk in its own right, with plenty of scenery and some wide, colourful vistas. I was intending to follow FP8 as far as FP10 (the diagonal path that runs back to where three paths meet on the yellow B-road, Edgerely Road). In fact, just past the dauntingly named but aromatically inoffensive slurry bed (marked on the map above as a blue rectangle) and on the other side of a metalled lane, the grassy path was flooded with very gungy, muddy ankle-deep water and I really didn’t fancy getting a boot fool of distinctly fetid sludge. Instead, I retraced my steps and turned west to cut along the metalled track that leads from FP8 to Grange Farm (of which it is a part) and retraced my original path along FP6 to Edgerley Road (along the route that I took a couple of days ago). So there remains a small run of the Churton section of Watling Street West accessible on public footpaths that I have yet to complete.

Roman Road Watling Street West (Margary 6a) where it crosses Edgerley Lane. The section south of the road is not a public footpath. Source: Roman Roads in Britain Gazeteer

As the above maps show, Watling Street West bypassed Farndon completely, running to its east. There is speculation, currently unsupported by archaeological evidence, that there may have been some sort of Roman installation at the present crossing between Farndon and Holt, because this may have been the best place to ford the river. The tile and pottery works to the north of Holt on the east bank of the Dee made use of the river for most of their transportation needs, but a connection to Watling Street West would have been desirable, via a small branch road. Even if there was a small Roman presence at Farndon, like a fortlet, it did not attract a large community and there was no reason to divert the main line of Watling Street West. It is only when Farndon became an expanding community, some time after the construction of a permanent bridge, that a route from Aldford to Farndon was established. Today, the B5130 passes along the 6aa (Huntington to Aldford) route rather than the 6a (Bridge Street to Aldford) route and then heads through the middle of Churton before arriving at Farndon. Churton grew up as a small ribbon development along this new route, its earliest buildings apparently dating to the 17th century. This route eventually replaced the section of Watling Street West that ran from Aldford to the east of Churton. We are lucky that Watling Street West still survives as a farm track and public footpath.

Aldford viewed from Lower Lane

Footpath FP7 across a field from Lower Lane, just short of the B5130 road that runs through Churton and Aldford. A short flight of wooden steps leads to a stile.

Footpath across the field from Lower Lane The footpath goes through the hedge and heads south, to the right

There are good views over the fields as you head to the south.

Follow the footpath to the east end of the restricted byway (RB16 on the map above), turn left and proceed along footpath FP8 along the Roman road

After crossing a small metalled lane leading to Grange Farm, the track runs out and a grassy and soggy section of the footpath leads further south.

The sogginess became very wet indeed and I turned back at this point, and will resume on another day.

Looking back the way I had come, the Roman road heads back towards Aldford and I turned left towards Grange Farm and a dry route back to Churton.

A note on walking conditions. Some of the walk follows a small lane but the rest runs through fields and young woodland or coppices. It is all very easy underfoot. However, at this time of year, and following any recent rainfall, sturdy damp-proof hiking footwear is strongly recommended as there is a bit of slightly uneven ground and some very muddy sections. Hereabouts, the land is not always well drained, and standing water tends to gather and linger soggily on the surface.

Sources:

Books and journals:

Davies, H. 2008. Roman Roads of Britain. Shire Archaeology

Frere, S.S., Hassall, M.W.C. and Tomlin, R.S.O. 1988. Roman Britain in 1987. Britannia, Vol. 19 (1988), p.415-508

Jones, G.D.B. and Webster P.V. 1968. Mediolanum: Excavations at Whitchurch 1965–6. Archaeological Journal, 125:1, p.193-254

Lathan, F.A. 1981. Farndon. The History of a Cheshire Village. Local History Group

Margary, I. 1973 3rd edition). Roman Roads in Britain. John Baker 1973.

Mason, D.J.P. 2001, 2007. Roman Chester. City of the Eagles. Tempus

Mason, D.J.P. 2007. Chester AD 400-1066. From Roman Fortress to English Town. Tempus.

Peel, J.H.B. 1976. Along the Roman Roads of Britain. Macmillan

Shaw, M. and Clark, J. 2003a. Cheshire Historic Towns Survey. Aldford Archaeological Assessment. Environmental Planning, Cheshire County Council

Shaw, M. and Clark, J. 2003b. Cheshire Historic Towns Survey. Farndon Archaeological Assessment. Environmental Planning, Cheshire County Council

Ward, S. 2013. Chester. A History. The History Press

Website resources:

Cheshire West and Chester – Public Map Viewer
https://maps.cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk/cwac/webmapping

Roman Roads Research Association http://www.romanroads.org/

The Roads of Roman Britain
http://roadsofromanbritain.org/index.html
http://www.romanroads.org/gazetteer/cheshire/cheshire.html

A Web-enhanced version of Roman Roads in Britain by Thomas Codrington,
published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 1903
https://tinyurl.com/75ujdd43

A touch of Rome just east of Churton #1 – Background

Leave a reply

Yesterday I went to find the section of the Roman road that runs from Chester, through Aldford, and down to the east of Churton. I have divided this post into two parts. The first part, below, looks at the background to Roman roads in Britain. Part 2 describes the walk itself.

The Cuppin Street excavation one lunchtime, 1986 or 87. My photo.

As mentioned in the introduction to this blog, I trained as an archaeologist and spent my summers in the 1980s digging up various parts of England and Wales. Although technically a prehistorian, my early excavation experience also included the Roman temple site at Caerwent (Venta Silurum in southeast Wales), the basilica at Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum in Hampshire) and three consecutive seasons with the Grosvenor Museum team on the multi-period Cuppin Street site in Chester (Deva). Whenever modern building work takes place in Chester, the city’s archaeologists are given time to undertake excavations. Before we started digging it up, under the capable direction of Dr Simon Ward, the site was an informal, roughly surfaced car park that was destined to become the Magistrates Courts, originally just outside the Roman town’s walls.

A collapsed road was one of many important features that made up a truly fascinating site. The metalled road had a central dip along its depth, which we set out to investigate. Black tar from a defunct Victorian gasworks oozed into a very deep trench, where a friend and I were excavating what lay beneath the road. A wood-lined drain beneath the road had slowly collapsed over time, becoming blocked with general waste, the middle of the well-made road had gently subsided into the void, creating a bizarre concave profile. Drains in Deva were often located under roads, and could be up to 5ft deep. The Cuppin Street example was one of several major and minor roads and lanes that punctured Deva from all directions. I’ve had something of an interest in Roman roads ever since.

Deva (later Deva Victrix) was at the far northwestern edge of the roman Road network Where England and Wales met at the point where the Dee emptied into its estuary. It was a strategically important Roman base with a large command area over much of the northwest and north Wales. The legionary fortress was established by at least AD79 in the territory of the Cornovii who were based at Wroxeter (Virconium Cornoviorum), although Rome’s presence in the Chester area predates the permanent fortress by two decades. There is no indication of violence, and it is possible that the Cornovii had already come to terms with the Roman invaders, perhaps as early as AD43 when Claudius entered into treaty relationships with a number of kings. Whatever Roman presence had been here previously, the fortress was established in AD79, having been started in around AD74-75, and was built by the Second “Adtiutrix” Legion. In AD86 the second legion was sent to the Danube and was replaced by the Twentieth “Valeria Victrix” Legion, which remained until the withdrawal of the Roman army from Britain in AD 410.

One of Julian Baum’s stunning impressions of Deva, showing the
beginning of Watling Street West (Margary 6a) and the Dee
crossing. Source: Julian Baum, Take27 Ltd.

When completed, the Deva fortress covered over 60 acres (24 hectares) on the standard playing-card plan (see site plan below), and eventually housed up to 6750 soldiers, servants and slaves, and was the headquarters of the local legion. It was a sizeable entity, 20% larger than both Caerleon (Isca) and York (Eboracum), which were both permanent legionary fortresses that were built at much the same time as Deva. It has been suggested that this size may have been needed to accommodate some unusually grand buildings under orders from an important official resident at the fortress, perhaps the provincial governor who, appointed by the emperor himself, would have required a more impressive portfolio of amenities than the usual fortress would have provided. A civilian entourage followed the military, including merchants, service providers and families of the soldiers (legionnaires were not permitted to marry until AD212, but this did not prevent them having partners and children). They were not permitted to live within the fortress so settlements (canabae legionis) grew up as suburbs immediately in the vicinity of the fortress. Also near to the fortress were the site’s cemeteries. Other small civil settlements growing up further afield at Heronbridge, a farming community, and the smaller Saltney. A tile and pottery works was established further down the Dee at Holt.

Roman roads of the Chester area. 6a and 6aa leave Chester and head south, meeting at Alford. 6a continues south, passing to the east of the Dee and the villages of Churton and Farndon. Map source: The excellent “Roads of Roman Britain” online gazetteer.

The fortress was in a good strategic position, convenient both for subjugating fractious groups in north Wales and for maintaining control over the northwest, where subjugation of the troublesome Brigantian tribe had become a priority. It was built on a rise in the land within a bend in the river Dee, meaning that it had natural defences on two sides, which contributed substantially to the security of the walled fort. The racecourse, on the Roodee, sits on the location of what was once a natural harbour, enabling a busy port to flourish on the Dee just beneath the fort. This was a natural extension of the road network, enabling the fort to be provisioned, with both soldiers and supplies being brought in from Europe, and for local commerce to develop along the coast. The Romans brought a wide selection of foods to Britain that we now think of as everyday, but were then luxury items, including apples, pears, cherries, grapes, asparagus, cabbages, carrots, onions, turnips, cucumbers, fennel and dill. High value perishables like these were much better transported by sea than road, which was both slower and could seriously jolt fragile produce. Other luxury items usually trusted to sea rather than road were high quality but delicate or costly objects like samian pottery, glass and vessels of wine. To link north and south, the river required the provision of a bridge, and this was erected where Lower Bridge Street crosses the Dee into Handbridge. In its place is now the Old Dee Bridge, dating to the 14th Century. The road went on to Whitchurch and Wroxeter, from where a number of destinations were possible. Today it is known as Watling Street West. Other roads out of Deva headed north, east and west, as shown on the map below.

The vast and complex road network was the glue that bound the impressive imperial infrastructure of forts, fortresses, fortlets, towns, inns, way-stations, camps and industrial centres. It is a remarkable cat’s-cradle of long straight stretches, most metalled or paved, others very rough, with some following much older trackways. Today many modern roads follow these original Roman routes, like Watling Street, along which the A5 now travels. Roman roads were planned out by teams of engineers and surveyors. There are no documents detailing how the task was achieved, but the first step was probably to establish the line of the road, which was planned as a more or less straight line, as the crow flies, from a to b (in this case Chester to Whitchurch). Just as today, the army had trained surveyors and engineers. A map would probably have been prepared, and the required line would have been staked out.

The profile of Stane Street in Surrey offers a good idea of how many roads were built in Roman Britain. Source: Epsom and Ewell History Explorer website.

Although the local geology, geomorphology and soil structure determined the exact construction of roads, they followed a basic conceptual idea of how a road should be built. Roads were flanked by drainage ditches, which carried rainfall runoff and provided quarry material for a raised section along the road. In profile, the roads were were usually built up above the level of the surrounding landscape and were cambered, with a curved top and sloping edges to aid drainage. Many modern accounts describe four or more levels of construction, but Hugh Davies says that this belief, widespread but incorrect, was probably a misreading of the work of a famous Roman architect called Vitruvius who certainly describes for successive layers, but was actually referring to paved areas around prominent buildings rather than roads. In the case of roads, a standard arrangement was usually much simpler, consisting of two levels, although road construction methods differ from one place to another. The standard arrangement consisted of an agger (a built-up section of road between the two drainage ditches), a layer of rough metalling consisting of stones, cobbles, pebbles and smaller infill, and then a top layer of smaller stones and/or gravel. Some were then topped with paving stones, which helped to preserve them. The agger could be up to 1.2m (4ft) but was often raised only just above the level of the surrounding landscape. Like forts and temples, roads were not strictly standardized. Today some remarkable examples survive, but the greater majority have been destroyed or eroded. Re-use for modern roads and expansion of urban settlement have destroyed sections of roads, while weather damage and compaction over the centuries have flattened many of the surviving roads and broken up their surfaces.

Sasha Trubetskoy’s schematic map of Roman Britain, based on
Harry Beck’s London Underground map of 1933. Click image to see a bigger version. Source: Sasha Maps

Modern knowledge of this vast network, extending from the south coast into mid Scotland, has been built up by extensive detective work from the 18th Century onwards. Initial research into the British Roman road network was based on the “Antonine Itinerary,” written in c.AD 200, one of handful of surviving Latin documents that provide records names and other data that can help to located both and the routes of roads. The document is made up of a series of lists, and each list, or iter, provides details about the start and end point of each route, its total mileage (mille passus or m.p, meaning 1000 paces) and notes places distributed along the routes. The lists only cover about 25% of British roads, and are by no means complete, but they have been an invaluable research tool. Today, with dedicated work on foot, together with the use of remote sensing technologies from the air, each year new discoveries help to fill the obvious gaps and to reveal unsuspected stretches. One of the most important organizations contributing to this task of identifying sections of the road network is the terrific Roman Roads Research Association, which builds on work pioneered by Roman road expert Ivan D. Margary. Margary devised a numbering system to both identify and categorize Roman roads, publishing his comprehensive “Roman Roads in Britain” in 1955, which continues to be an invaluable reference. The Roman Roads Research website includes an invaluable online gazetteer, the Cheshire section of which has been assembled by David Ratledge and Neil Buckley, with many thanks for such a great resource. The outcome of all of this research is nicely captured on a cleverly conceived schematic map designed by cartographer Sasha Trubetskoy, using the London Underground of map of 1933 designed by Harry Beck as a template.

Sources:

Books and journals:

Davies, H. 2008. Roman Roads of Britain. Shire Archaeology

Frere, S.S., Hassall, M.W.C. and Tomlin, R.S.O. 1988. Roman Britain in 1987. Britannia, Vol. 19 (1988), p.415-508