London Before the Conquest

ty brigge of

tis full roya

is goeth many

et gownes and c

am Du

ns and beyond (the Watling Street); Iter 5, London to Colchester, and from thence to Lincoln; Iter 6, London to Lincoln, starting by th

don and the

r; the four are evidently the chief Roman roads in the island. The identification of the Watling Street is certain, for Bede says that St. Albans was called Watlingcester, and Saxon charters show that Hampstead and Paddington were on it; it is the modern Edgware Road. Henry of Huntingdon tells us that the Watling Street ran from the south-east to the north-west, and that Erming Street ran from no

irst formed before London became of much importance, that it avoided the great Essex forest

eat Watling Street is entirely of Roman date, a ferry at Westminster may have superseded the Brent-ford. The actual passage was probably from Tothill Street to Stangate on the south side of the river: "Stangate" is

truggle.[54] "Le Tothull" is mentioned in 1250, when Henry III. granted the Abbey to hold a fair there. Hollar's view shows a mound. The Tothill was common ground, and everything points to its having been formerly a defensive work. The wes

treet then went across the end of Hyde Park, and by St. James's Park to the street near Palace Yard called the Wool Staple, and crossed to Stangate on the opposite side of the river. The southward continuation of the road then passed over St. George's Fields to Deptford and Blackhea

ring the Middle Age paused, as visitors to Rome paused on their way only half a century agone. The may

om Eltham s

rs with hym

lak-heth ful

on withough

London, se

e evere from

f Shooters' Hill, where the country is low, there remained a raised highway 40 feet wide and 4 feet high. According

Old Street), "because London was not then considerable, but in a little time Holborn was struck out from it, entering the city at New

a doubt that, in late Roman days at least, the great west-to-east road passed through the city and by the Mile End Road through Stratford and the other places named from "street" to Chelmsford and Colchester. Besides the great Roman roads there were of course many local ways. The High Street from Aldersgate to Islington, also mentioned in the twelfth cent

evidence of the great road itself. The name Stratford is mentioned as Strachford in a charter of the Conqueror.[58] In the life of St. Erkenwald given in the Golden Legend, it is said that his body was brought to Londo

e Abbey by Geoffrey de Mandeville; and the names found in it must then have been of immemorial antiquity. Mr. Stevenson, in a recent criticism of the document, accepts it as genuine and proposes the date 971.[60] It reads: "First up from the Thames along Merfleet to Pollenstock, so to Bulinga Fen, and along the old ditc

n, temp. Edward I., as in, or near, the Campis de Eya-now Hyde Park and St. James's.[61] This Cowford was probably where Piccadilly "dip" crosses the Tyburn va

Regia extending to London past the garden of St. Giles [in-the-Fields], and Roman remains have been found in Holborn. The Here Street has been traced between Silchester and Staines through Egham, and on this side of Staines, not far from Ashf

und to the west by the Watling Street, and one to the east by Colchester,-it

Edgar. To the south of London he lays down a "Stone Street" from Chichester through Bignor (Roman villa) and Dorking. In vol. ix. of Arch?ologia, Bray, the co-author of the History of Surrey, traces this "Roman road through Sussex and Surrey to London." "That there was a great road from Arundel which ran north and north-east to London is very certain, considerable remains of it being now (1788) visible in many places." Another road from the south seems to have passed through Croydon and Streatham, which in a charter of the Confessor is called Stratham.[65] Near Ockley the former was called "Stone Street Causeway," and

and military way led along Kent Street on the left-hand side, "and pointed directly to Dowgate by the Bishop of Winchester's stairs, which to this day is called Stone Street." I cannot, however, accept the inference as to the name Stone Street in this place, as it ran directly through what was Winchester Palace, wh

Watling Street; then burning Southwark, but not venturing to assault the walled city, he moved down the Stone Street and across to Farnham and Wallingford, and then north-east, by the Icknield Way, and so commanded the northern Watling Street and Erming Street and

d (2) from south to north, from Chichester to Lincoln. These roads, entering the city by Holborn and the bridge, and issuing by Aldgate and

s to be the Irishmen's road, from Welsh Gwythel-Goidel-Irishman. These derivations seem to be a little over symmetrical. Other roads than that through St. Albans were called Watling Street, which almost seems to be a generic term, just as in Wales the Roman ways are called Sarn Helen. In the story of Maxen Wledig (Maximus Emperor) we are told that the Empress Helen made

e been found bear the name of Hadrian. The antiquity of our place-names, roads, and bridges is well brought out in a seventh-century charter to Chertsey Abbey. The land boundary, beginning at the mouth of the Wey, passed by Weybridge, then by the mill-stream to the old Here Street and along it to Woburn Brid

at Lundene-brigce."[70] In a poem on Holy Olaf the King of Norway, by a contemporary, he is said to have broken down London Bridge in an attack on the Danes in the interest

ht be driven past each other thereover. On the bridge were made strongholds, both castles and bulwarks, looking down stream, so high that they reached a man above his waist; but under the bridge were pales stuck into the bottom of the river. And when an onset was made the host stood on the bridge all along it and warded it. King Ethelred was mickle mind-sick how he was to win the bridge." King Olaf made wooden shelters over his boats, "and the host of the Northmen rowed right up under the bridge and

-bold, t

orm! Yet t

Bridge: it

land of sna

it is unnecessary to force such a remote origin for the ditty. As to the bridge itself, the account just given as to its being of wood agrees with the fact that no piers seem to have been preserved when i

ughout the entire line of the old bridge, the bed of the river was found to contain ancient wooden piles; and when these piles, subsequently to the erection of the new bridge (about 1835), were pulled up to deepen the channel of the river, many thousands of Roman coins, with abundance of Roman tiles and pottery, were discovered; and immediately beneath some of the central piles, brass medallions of Aurelius, Faustina, and Com

ways been too valuable a material for the head to have been wilfully cast away. Moreover, we have evidences of two bridges by the Roman Wall which were the work of Hadrian. That at Newcastle, called after him, Pons ?lii, had a history curiously parallel with London Bridge, for it gave way to a medi?val bridge in 1248, which was destroyed in the flood of 1771. During the rebuilding parts of the Roman structure were found. Near Hexham, where the line of the wall crosses the North Tyne, there are still v

St. Botolph's Port is mentioned in connection with the bridge in a charter of the Conqueror. Notwithstanding that this conjecture was dispro