Journal of Historical Geography, 2, 3 (1976) 207-221

The road network of medieval England and Wales

Brian Paul Hindle

The medieval road system of England and Wales has never been studied in any detail. This article attempts to bring together the cartographic evidence of the Gough and Paris maps and the more indirect evidence of three royal itineraries. This will suggest first which Roman roads were still in use in medieval times, and second what new lines of travel had come into use, thus distinguishing between the paved Roman roads which were still usable and the new routes which made and maintained themselves.

There are only a handful of articles and books dealing in any detail with the medieval road network; most are in general history and economic history texts (though the number of these which still ignore roads altogether is alarming), whilst others are in books about the history of roads themselves, in which the medieval period generally forms a rather meagre chapter, sandwiched between the Roman roads and the turnpikes. The majority of the references deal with the state of the roads, the safety of travel, means of travel or the responsibility for maintenance, but only a few deal with the roads as a network. It is the aim of this article to suggest possible sources of information on the medieval road network, and to see if these can be used to determine the extent of usable medieval roads.

Previous research

Sir F. M. Stenton’s article published in 1936[11 remains the only comprehensive study of the road network in medieval England, and part of it was reprinted with the facsimile of the Gough map. t21 Surprisingly he was the first to use the evidence of the roads shown on this map; “With one notable exception . . . the material for the course of English roads has come to consist of little beyond brief accounts of single journeys. “~1 He notes the tradition surviving into Norman times that the four great roads (Watling Street, Ermine Street, Fosse Way and Icknield Way) were under the king’s special protection-suggesting that these roads at least had remained in use throughout the Dark Ages although much of the Roman network, centred on London, was of no economic or military importance and had thus gone out of use. Under Norman and Angevin rule there was a rapid centralization of

[l] F. M. Stenton, The road system of medieval England Economic History Review 7 (1936) 1-21

[2] E. J. S. Parsons, The map of Great Britain, c. A.D. 1360, known as the Gough map Memoir and facsimile. Bodleian Library and R.G.S. (1958)

[3] Stenton, op. cit. 2

208 B. P. HINDLE

government and of the courts, and the need for good roads to London once more became acute; similarly, the continual Welsh political troubles ensured good roads through the Marches.

He notes the remarkable mobility of the royal court as demonstrated in the reconstructed itineraries which show “that in every part of England there existed a network of local roads which could bear the passage of very considerable company, and the transport of the provisions necessary for its entertainment”.[rl Cross-country travel was frequently recorded, though he notes that there are almost no references to the building of new roads, only of bridges. His conclusion is worth quoting at length: “(The road system) lacked both the directness and the material definition of the Roman achievement. . . . Nevertheless, with all its defects, the road system of medieval England provided alternative routes between many pairs of distant towns, united port and inland market, permitted regular if not always easy communication between the villages of a shire and the county town, . . . and brought every part of the country within a fortnight’s ride of London. In the last resort, it proved not inadequate to the requirements of an age of notable economic activity, and it made possible a centralisation of national government to which there was no parallel in western Europe.“[21

The main points raised by some of the other authors who have written on the subject can be summarized briefly. First, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that there was a demand for roads; traffic included not only merchandise on horseback and in carts, but various officials, both secular and ecclesiastical, as well as the king, his court, and the various justices and revenue collectors. Pilgrims must also have formed a substantial group on the roads.r31 Second, the medieval concept of a road was more a right of way than a physical track.141 Third, it is generally accepted that some of the Roman roads and earlier trackways still remained intact and were increasingly used during our period, with the increase in volume of internal trade.151 Fourth, new roads grew from habitual lines of travel and maintained themselves ; there was virtually no road-building as such during the medieval period, and thus archaeological evidence is almost totally lacking.@’ There is a basic physical distinction, therefore, between the Roman roads and the medieval routes which made and maintained themselves. Fifth, some authors hold that the roads were in a good condition due to upkeep by various landowners and villagers, and that the roads were sufficient for the traffic; the system was centralized on London, alternatives were often available and cross-country travel common.[71 However, other authors maintain that the roads were in a poor state

[l] Stenton, op. cit. 6 [2] Ibid. 21 [3] J. E. T. Rogers, Agriculture andprices in England 125~1400 (1866) 138-9; W. Cunningham,

The growth of English industry and commerce during the Early and Middle Ages (5th ed. London 1910) 45&l ; R. A. Pelham, Fourteenth century England, Ch. 6 of H. C. Darby (Ed.), An historical geography of England before A. D. 1800 (Cambridge 1936) 262-3

[4] S. and B. Webb, The story of the King’s highway (1913) 5-6 [5] J. J. Jusserand, La vie nomade et les routes d’tlngleterre au XZVe Siecle (Paris 1884) 32-7,

translated as English wayfaring life in the Middle Ages (1889); L. F. Salzman, English trade in the Middle Ages (Oxford 193 1) 185-90

[6] C. T. Flower, Public works in medieval law, 2 ~01s. Seldon Society 32 and 40 (1915 and 1923) esp. vol. 2, xvi; W. G. Hoskins, The making of the English landscape (1955) 180-90

[7] J. E. T. Rogers, The economic interpretation ofhistory (1888) 4834; J. F. Willard, Inland transportation in England during the fourteenth century Speculum 1 (1926) 361-74; H. J. Hewitt, Medieval Cheshire (Manchester 1929) 67

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and that river transport was to be preferred certainly for trade, if not for most purposes.[ll

Cartographic evidence

The negligible amount of research on the medieval road system is a direct consequence of the paucity of written and archaeological evidence. In fact the only direct historical evidence for the network is contained in five maps which, although remarkable in themselves, would not normally be accepted as the sole evidence on which to reconstruct the medieval road network.

The first known maps of Britain to give any accurate topographic detail were drawn by Matthew Paris, a monk of St Albans, about 1250. There are four versions extant, and each has a string of names down the centre of the country.[21 This line of towns, evidently drawn first, is basic to the construction of the maps, and represents a route from Dover to Newcastle. The full route is Dover, Canter- bury, Rochester, London, St Albans, Dunstable, Northampton, Leicester, Belvoir, Newark, Blyth, Doncaster, Pontefract, Boroughbridge, Northallerton, Durham and Newcastle; J. B. Mitchell suggests that the route continues to Berwick. The only peculiarity of the route is the diversion to the small Benedictine monastery at Belvoir, one of the cells of St Albans, between Leicester and Newark, where the route might have been expected to go z)ia Nottingham. The other cells of St Albans (Tynemouth, Binham, Wymondham and Wallingford) are all shown on the maps, though no route connects any of them to St Albans. The source of the route detail on these maps was almost certainly a written itinerary, although several of the places on it (Dover, Canterbury, Rochester, London, Belvoir, Blyth and Durham) had Benedictine houses, and thus the routes to them from St Albans must in any case have been well known. These maps must still, though, be viewed with a certain degree of wariness; a legend on Map D admits that “si pagine pateretur, haec totalis insula longior esse deberet” (“if the size of the page had permitted, the island would have been shown longer than it is”); a sentence which is always a useful antidote to any over-reliance on early maps.

The most important medieval map of Britain is the anonymous map, drawn about 1360, named after the antiquarian Richard Gough who first noted its existence in 1780.[31 As Gough himself said, “The greatest merit of this map is, that it may justly boast itself the first among us wherein the roads and distances are laid down.“r41 The road network covers much of England and Wales, though

[l] M. W. Barley, Lincolnshire rivers in the Middle Ages Lincolnshire Architectural and Archaeological Sot. Reports and Papers N.S. 1 (1938) 1-21; L. D. Stamp and S. H. Beaver, The British Isles (1933, 5th ed. 1963) 648; A. C. Leighton, Transport and communication in early medieval Europe A.D. 500-1100 (Newton Abbot 1972) 125

[2] K. Miller, Mappaemundi III (Stuttgart 1895) 73-82; H. Poole and J. P. Gilson, Four maps of Great Britain designed by Matthew Paris about A.D. 1250 (British Museum 1928); G. R. Crone, Some map reproductions Geographical Journal 73 (1929) 375; J. B. Mitchell, The Matthew Paris maps Geographical Journal 81 (1933) 27-34; R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (1958)

[3] R. Gough, British Topography, 2 vols (1780); R. A. Pelham, The Gough map Geographical Journal 81 (1933) 34-9; F. M. Stenton, op. cit.; E. J. S. Parsons, The map of Great Britain, c. A.D. 1360, known as the Cough map Memoir with amended reprint of part of paper by F. M. Stenton (1936) and a colour facsimile (Bodleian Library, Oxford 1958); B. P. Hindle, The roads of the Cough map (paper presented to the 5th International Conference on the History of Cartography, Warsaw, 1973)

[4] R. Gough, op. cit. i, 84

210 B. P. HINDLE

it stops at Hadrian’s Wall; 2,940 miles of roads are shown, almost 40 per cent of which are along the line of old Roman roads (Fig. 1). The basic similarity to the Roman network is strongest in the north-west, though large sections of the Great North Road and the cross-country route from Bristol to Doncaster are also similar. Of the four main roads of Saxon England, Icknield Street and Fosse Way are not

represented at all, and there is only a short length of Watling Street. The most important difference from the Roman network is that the road to Yorkshire (Ermine Street) no longer goes oia Lincoln but traverses the country further west. The roads have been classified by E. J. S. Parsons as main, secondary and local roads, although he mysteriously omits the main road from Reading to Oxford and includes the Penrith to Carlisle road twice .[ll A description of the main routes by Stenton can be found in the same source.[“J

EXPLANATION

- Roman roads

Pre Roman trackwa

Kilometres

Figure 1. Roman roads on the Cough map.

Figure 2. The routes of Matthew Paris and the Gough map.

Perhaps the most obvious criticism of the map is that it omits several routes which are known from other sources to have been in use; London to Dover, and York to Newcastle for instance. It does, however, show the intervening towns in the correct order; Gravesend-Rochester (where a bridge is shown)-Sittingbourne- Faversham-Canterbury in the first instance and Thirsk-Northallerton-Croft- Darlington-Durham-Chester le Street in the second. It is obvious that the positions of many towns on the map are correct in relation to each other, and thus the absence of a line and distance does not render the map useless. Indeed, most of England has a dense enough spread of towns, correctly placed in relation to each other, to enable a traveller to plan his route, “when a tracing from a modern

[I] E. J. S. Parsons, op. cit. 36-7 [2] F. M. Stenton, op. cit.

MEDIEVAL ROAD SYSTEM 211

1 : 1,000,000 map is placed over the Gough map so that the positions of the towns of Basingstoke and Winchester agree, it is found that those of Alton and Winchester agree also ” ~1 The roads reflect a strong degree of centralization on .

London; only the south coast road and the Welsh coastal road are totally indepen- dent of London. “Whatever the limitations of his knowledge, the compiler of the map had at least arrived at the conception of a national system of roads radiating from the national capital.“[21

One important question, though, has remained unasked by previous workers, and it will remain at least partly unanswered by the present author. That is: what is the significance of the lines connecting the towns on this map? Do they denote an actual road or are they merely drawn in as a cartographic device on which to place a figure representing tthe distance‘? At the one extreme these mileages could have been estimates of distance across open country or, at the other, each line could represent a measured distance along an actual road. It is evident that some of these lines follow Roman roads, although it does not follow that those roads were in use, or even passable; perhaps like General Wade’s Highland roads they were shunned by the local people who preferred to ride or drive their animals on the softer ground alongside, or even further away from the Roman road, creating a new line of travel. As for the lines which do not follow Roman roads, it is best to leave an open verdict. No major roads were constructed after the Romans left until the turnpike era, and so if these lines represent anything, it must, at best, have been tracks which made and maintained themselves and, at worst, simply directions on the map to guide the traveller across open country.[31

The simple process of superimposing the Gough map road network and the Matthew Paris route produces a more unified picture (Fig. 2); the London-Dover and Boroughbridge-Newcastle gaps are filled, though there is still a strange isolation of York, connected only from the north, and of Lincoln, which although having a local network is still unconnected to the rest of the country. There must, however, have been a strong link by river between York and Lincoln. In only a few areas do the two maps disagree. Although the general pattern of roads seems at first sight to give good coverage, a glance at J. C. Russell’s borough population figures for 1348, which although slightly dubious in their accuracy in absolute terms can be relied upon at least in relative terms, reveals that the second largest town in the country was York, which is so poorly connected according to these maps.i41 The fifth, ninth and tenth ranking boroughs (Plymouth, King’s Lynn and Colchester) are not connected at all, the seventh (Lincoln) has only local roads and is isolated from the rest of the network. On the other hand, Chester and Carlisle, which seem to be fairly well served with roads, are 42nd and 51st in overall rank. It is evident that our knowledge of the medieval road system of England and Wales, from what might be termed direct historical evidence. is limited by both the uncertainty of the significance of the evidence and by its poor historical and geographical distribution.

[I] E. J. S. Parsons, op. cit. 19 [2] F. M. Stenton, op. cit. 8 [3] B. P. Hindle, A geographical synthesis of the road network of medieval England and Wales

(unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Salford 1973) 54 [4] J. C. Russell, Medieval regions and their cities (Newton Abbot 1972) Ch. 6; J. C. Russell,

British medieoal population (Albuquerque 1948) 140-3

15

212 B. P. HINDLE

Royal itineraries

Many previous writers have quoted from various written itineraries, usually giving examples of rapid movement to support the theory that the roads were in a relatively good condition at this time. It is the contention of the present author that these itineraries, and in particular the royal itineraries, present data from which a road network can be inferred. In some cases this information is probably better than, say, the inclusion of a line on the Gough map; the cartographer may only have known of a road by hearsay whereas with an itinerary it is normally safe to assume that the subject did actually travel between the places listed, and in the order in which they are listed.

The particular value of royal itineraries, as opposed for example to bishops’ itineraries, is that it is reasonable to expect the king to cover a less biased selection of stopping places than a bishop: “The Court stopped, with a few exceptions, at some place in which the king had an interest, either a castle, royal manor, or at some religious house, in order that he might consume the provisions due to him in lieu of rent from those places.“[lr Ring John, for example, during 1204-5 is recorded as having made 360 moves, visiting 145 royal manors or demesnes, 129 castles, and 46 religious houses as well as 40 other places (these figures include repeated visits to the same place). Bishops’ itineraries are however valuable for studies of individual dioceses-for a medieval bishop rarely left his own diocese.[21 Royal itineraries were not written down by contemporary writers, but have been compiled by later workers from various sources, some relying on only a few documents, others such as H. Gough’s Itinerary of King Edward the First using over thirty sources.r31

There are many problems in using this type of evidence;r41 first there is the basic problem of simply locating some of the places given in the itineraries-sometimes they give incorrect locations, and on other occasions are unable to suggest a modern name at all. The Ordnance Survey maps of Monastic Britain proved useful in determining uncertain locations, though recourse had also to be made on the one hand to Saxton’s county maps (often using a spelling nearer to that given in the itineraries) and to the modern maps on the other, as well as to the various publications of the English Place-Name Society. The second problem is a traditional one in historical geography-namely the missing data problem. The gaps in the itinerary can sometimes be filled by looking for previous or subsequent journeys along the same route. If, however, the itinerary reads something like this :

Itinerary of 18 Edward I[51

1289 December 10 Lyndhurst 11 12 Lyndhurst

then the problem is insoluble and we must assume that he did not leave Lyndhurst, whereas he may have journeyed out to one of many places, and returned again

[l] T. D. Hardy, Itinerarium Johannis Regis Angliae Archaeologia 22 (1829) 125 [2] B. P. Hindle, “A geographical synthesis”, op. cit. 94-100 [3] H. Gough, Itinerary of King Edward the First, 2 vols (Paisley 1900) [4] For a fuller discussion of the problems see: B. P. Hindle, “A geographical synthesis”, op. cit.

62-70 [5] H. Gough, op. cit. ii, 64

MEDIEVAL ROAD SYSTEM 213

on the 12th. On a few days more than one place is given, and this is especially helpful in plotting the route taken, but the major practical problem in using these data to reconstruct a road network lies in assigning a day’s move to a route on the map. In most cases the solution adopted was to draw a straight line between the two points thus obtaining generalized lines of travel. However, if the king travelled at all frequently along a particular line it is reasonable to suppose that some sort of track existed on the ground; this is the basic assumption of the maps which follow.

A more intractable problem is encountered where river transport could have provided an alternative to the roads, and the itineraries give us no clue as to the king’s mode of transport; the Thames and the rivers flowing into the Humber were probably much used. It was also sometimes difficult to plot an overland route from the information given; for example, it is not clear whether Edward 1 preferred the Roman route north from Pontefract to Tadcaster and York or the route via Ferrybridge and Shireburn in Elmet from where he could have gone on to Tadcaster again or have diverged eastwards on Bishop Dike to the Ouse at Cawood, completing his journey to York. by road or by boat.

Despite the problems outlined in the use of these itineraries and the limitations imposed, they can render vital information about the general directions of travel, even if they may be unreliable as to the precise location of roads. However, if a route were traversed at all frequently by the same king or by two or three of the kings whose itineraries have been mapped, then it is reasonable to suppose that this line of travel must have been represented on the ground by a track or road, be it of Roman origin, or of the later type which must have made and maintained itself.

Route networks

There are published itineraries for Henry I, Henry II and Richard but these are only outlines, and in any case these monarchs spent little time in England. That for Henry III is also incomplete, and thus the best itineraries for the present purpose are those of John, Edward I and Edward II. John and Edward II made about the same number of moves (1,378 and 1,458 respectively) whereas Edward I made about twice as many moves (2,891); the patterns for all three are distinctly different.

The itinerary of Ring John is the first to provide day-to-day details of the king’s whereabouts. ~1 John was an unusually mobile monarch, even for his time ; “In every medieval reign the crown and the household were itinerant, but he . . . was in motion ceaselessly, carrying his scrutiny into the west, and into the far north where kings seldom came. . . . In every journey the essentials of government, the hospitium regis . . . followed the court; a train of from ten to twenty carts and wagons.“r21 One route to emerge fairly clearly is the one to the north; after an indecisive start (the main line running oddly through High Wycombe and Brill) the various routes converge on Northampton, and then proceed via Geddington (not Leicester) to Nottingham, and by a choice of routes to Tickhill (Yorks), then on to Doncaster, Pontefract, York, Northallerton, Darlington, Durham and

[I] T. Hardy, op. cit. 124-60 [2] J. E. A. Jolliffe, The chamber and castle treasures under King John, in Studies in medieval

history presented to F. M. Powicke (Oxford 1948) 118-9

214 B. P. HINDLE

Newcastle (Figs 3 and 4). All the sections of this route were traversed at least five times and the section from Tickhill to York fourteen times. Another important through route to emerge is Windsor (via Reading or Freemantle) to Marlborough and on to Bradenstoke, Gloucester and Worcester. From Marlborough another well-used route went to Woodstock and Silverstone to join the route to the north.

Figure 3. The itinerary of King John.

Figure 4. The itinerary of King John: routes travelled three or more times.

Figure 5. The itinerary of Edward I.

Figure 6. The itinerary of Edward I: routes travelled three or more times.

MEDIEVAL ROAD SYSTEM 215

The most reliable of all these documents is probably Gough’s itinerary of Edward I because it uses over thirty different sources. The only criticism of this work is that Gough is often at fault with his suggested locations ; on one occasion he gives Heywood in Lancashire instead of Haywood, Staffs, a discrepancy of over 60 miles (100 krn),t” and quite frequently he is in difficulty with Welsh place names. The map of Edwards itinerary (Fig. 5) presents a denser network because he made twice as many journeys as John ; of particular interest are the routes in northern England and Wales connected with his military campaigns. The expected gaps in the north-west and the south-west of England are once again evident, though he made several trips across the Peak District. Some surprisingly little visited areas include the higher ground of Essex and Suffolk, and much of the Lincolnshire coast. On the map showing his more frequented routes (Fig. 6) we see a rather disjointed pattern with many roads apparently not connected to London, often representing journeys back and forth between two places. There is less sense of a unified road network than was the case with John’s travels; Norwich, Boston and Oxford are unconnected, and Bristol and Coventry poorly connected, to the network as a whole. Four of the five most frequently used roads were in fact from London ; to Canterbury, Windsor, Esher and Kings Langley, all travelled more than fifteen times. The other stretch of road in this category is from Northallerton to Newcastle which reflects the seven Scottish campaigns; although south of this section he seems to have used a great variety of routes, the two principal ones shown in Fig. 6 are first via York, Doncaster and Newark to Grantham, the second reaching Grantham by way of Beverley and Lincoln. They both continue by a choice of routes to Northampton and then down Watling Street to London. Overall it is evident that Edward 1 travelled less frequently along the same lines, but preferred to use a variety of routes to travel across the country.

The itinerary of Edward II gives a picture of a rather less mobile monarch than the energetic John and Edward I ; he covered much less of the country.[21 The information is as complete as that for Edward I, although derived from only seventeen sources. At first sight his itinerary (Fig. 7) seems as comprehensive as that of John (compare Fig. 3); many routes are similar, except that the densest cover of routes is now further north covering a broad triangle between London, Marlborough and York. Figure 8, however, shows the great difference between these two kings ; Edward II covered very few routes more than twice, and this map represents the merest skeleton of the road network. Comparison with Fig. 4 shows the great changes wrought in the hundred years after Magna Carta; the king no longer travelled from castle to castle, but was able to spend much more time in London, Windsor and York. Edward II travelled between London and Windsor no less than seventy-one times, which makes his seventeen journeys to Canterbury and the twenty-two between Windsor and King’s Langley seem relatively unimportant. What is important, however, is that the route to York and Newcastle is very clearly defined, no section of it being used less than eight times; from London it ran along Watling Street to King’s Langley as far as Stony Stratford where it diverged from the Roman road to go on to Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Doncaster, Pontefract, York, Northallerton, Darlington and Durham to Newcastle. Even the section north to Berwick is unequivocally defined, and

[l] H. Gough, op. cit. i, 51 [2] C. H. Hartshorne, An itinerary of Edward the Second (private distribution 1861)

216 B. P. HINDLE

there is an important branch route from York to Beverley which Edward traversed seventeen times. The only other route to come out at all strongly is the road from Windsor to Marlborough which he used seven times. One factor to emerge quite clearly is the use of the Trent and Ouse by Edward II; he almost certainly used the Thames as well but it is impossible to ascertain the extent of its use from the itinerary.

Figure 7. The itinerary of Edward II.

Figure 8. The itinerary of Edward II: routes travelled three or more times.

Comparison of the itineraries

A surprising feature is that none of these kings ventured very far into the south- western peninsula; the avoidance of other areas such as Wales and the north-west is more understandable since the king would have little cause to go to these sparsely populated and economically unimportant areas. Only when there were political troubles did Wales become an important destination. In an attempt to derive a minimum aggregate network for the three kings, a map was drawn to include all the routes travelled four times or more by two or three of the kings, and routes used at that frequency by only one king where these routes form a missing link in the network. Only one such link was added for each route already on the map. The resulting map, it is suggested, is a reasonable estimate of a net- work which would have been most useful to the movements of the king and his court in medieval times (Fig. 9), although there is no objective way of fixing the number of routes needed, or indeed the level at which routes become important. This map in its attempt to present a generalized picture of the most frequently used routes of the three kings spanning the years 1199-1327 is obviously of little use in local studies. A study of a smaller area would enable the itinerary routes to be plotted on a much larger scale and the travels of particular monarchs would be especially suited to certain areas ; Edward I’s travels in Cheshire and North Wales would be an obvious example.

MEDIEVAL ROAD SYSTEM 217

Towards a road network

Before any attempt can be made to compare the various types of evidence it is necessary to set the stage, as it were, on which the evidence is to be presented. England and Wales did have a relict road system, parts of it already a thousand years old at the start of our period of study. The existence of the Roman roads has been tacitly assumed throughout most of the examination of the evidence; only the routes of the Gough map have so far been analysed in terms of their relationship to the Roman roads (Fig. 1). The first step in attempting to define the extent of the medieval road system must be to assess the amount of use still being made of the Roman roads, and to do this we must first try to draw a picture of the full extent of the Roman road system. The chief evidence for this network has always been archaeological, simply because the roads were actually engineered throughout their length and provided with a surface. Thus the Roman network is inherently more reliable than any network which can be proposed for the medieval period. This is not the place for a detailed examination of the Roman road system, but there are several problems involved in trying to reconstruct even this network; for example, there are many gaps in the archaeological evidence which leave us with a fragmented network, and second we have no means of classifying the roads in terms of their importance.

Figure 10 is an attempt to draw a complete road map of Roman England; three sources have been used; the bulk of the roads on the map are derived from the Ordnance Survey’s Map of Roman Britain, which gives a division into roads of certain and uncertain course, and also shows a few prehistoric trackways in contemporary use.[ll A second source was the Antonine Itineraryt21 and finally some extra roads have been added from the more recent work of I. D. Margary,r31 though research done in the last eight years has yet to be systematically collected. The other communications feature shown on the map is the water route from York to Cambridge via the Ouse, Trent, Foss Dyke and Car Dyke.

It is now possible to compare this Roman road network with the various types of medieval evidence to determine which of these roads were still in use a thousand years later. We know for instance that the four great roads were regarded as being under the king’s special protection, and it seems reasonable to include these roads as routes which were regarded in medieval times as being basic to the road network. One line of evidence which, it is suggested, can be used to determine which Roman roads were in use in medieval times is the persistence of these same routes in the landscape today. It seems logical to assume that if the line of a Roman road is still represented by a road today, then it is likely to have had more or less continuous use as a road throughout the Middle Ages as well. At a more local level of investigation it would be possible to trace former Roman roads in the field rather than on maps, thus including lengths which are no longer used as roads, but are only represented by earthworks (“aggers”).

No attempt has been made to plot all the evidence for the medieval use of the Roman roads separately; it all appears together in Fig. 11 which can claim to represent which Roman roads were almost certainly still in use in medieval times. First, the Roman roads and prehistoric trackways used at least three times by each of the monarchs were plotted according to how many of the three kings used

[1 ] Ordnance Survey, Map of Roman Britain (1956) 12-3 [2] 0. Cuntz (Ed.), Ztineraria Romana I (Leipzig 1929) 464-86 [3] I. D. Margary, Roman roads in Britain (1967)

218 B. P. HINDLE

them with this admittedly low frequency. Then the Roman roads represented on the Gough map not already shown by the king’s travels were added (from Fig. 1); the High Street in Lincolnshire, a pre-Roman trackway shown on the Gough map from Ferriby to Horncastle, is also placed in this category. Next the only section of the Paris maps using a Roman road and not already shown was added (this was north-east from Aldborough across the Vale of York) and then the four great highways were inserted. Finally, the major lengths of Roman road which are still used as roads today were added. Of the last three categories shown on the map, there is a good deal of overlap, and they were plotted in the order given (i.e. map routes, then the four great highways and lastly Roman roads still in use).

This network gives a barely adequate cover of the country; there is, for example, no direct road from London to the West Country because the Roman road west of London went first to Silchester which was totally abandoned in the Dark Ages, its place as a route town being taken by Windsor and Reading, neither of which was on the Roman road system. There is another gap between Sarum and Dorchester for the same reason; the intermediate Roman settlement was Badbury. Perhaps the most surprising feature is that the Fosse Way is only included because it was one of the four great highways; the kings barely used it and it is not shown on the Gough map. The same is true of Watling Street between Towcester and Shrewsbury; the A5 traverses this route today, and yet all the evidence suggests that the medieval route went further west, via Coventry. There are several well- defined cross-country routes including the Icknield Way, the Fosse Way, and another route shown on the Gough map from the Bristol area through to Doncaster and the north. One road to emerge much more clearly here than in the previous evidence is the Great North Road which continues through Lincoln and York to Scotland. There is certainly no very clear impression of the nodality of London.

The next step is to add the roads on the contemporary maps and major routes used in the royal itineraries which were not along Roman routes, all of which can be truly designated as “medieval roads”. The resulting map (Fig. 12) can claim to be a reasonable estimate of the medieval road system before the Plague, dis- tinguishing between routes along Roman roads and new routes which came into use during the medieval period. This map is derived from three previous maps; the trackways and Roman roads still in use taken from Fig. 11 and then the routes of the Gough and Paris maps were added (Fig. 2), finally adding the parts of the suggested basic minimum royal itinerary network (Fig. 9) not already shown. In addition, the water route from Howden to Torksey is shown, and finally a few missing links were added, principally on the presumed lines of Roman roads. The main value of this map is not only that it portrays a very full network of roads, but that it contrasts the routes along old Roman roads and medieval trackways with the post-Roman roads, which, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, were presumably of the type which made and maintained themselves. In several areas this contrast is especially apparent; Cirencester is an important junction in the Roman system, and yet Oxford and Windsor are totally divorced from it. There is also a distinction in some places between the map evidence and the royal itinerary network; in the former Oxford is an important centre, whereas in the latter the main route centre is eight miles further north at the palace of Woodstock. There seem to be several important route centres in this network; London is the most obvious with ten converging routes, York having the same number, most of

MEDIEVAL ROAD SYSTEM 219

Figure 9. A minimum aggregate network based on the royal itineraries.

Figure IO. The original Roman road network.

c Figure II. Roman roads still in use in medieval times.

220 B. P. HINDLE

Figure 12. Known medieval roads (c. 1348).

them shorter in length, and followed by Marlborough and Leicester (9), Salisbury (8), Winchester and Woodstock (7), and Lincoln, Chester, Shrewsbury, Lichfield, Gloucester, Oxford and Windsor, all with six converging routes. In the north of England the system is less complete; however, a majority of the northern routes are along Roman roads, including many of those shown on the Gough map.

Conclusion

It is clear that only the five maps extant of the period give any really direct evidence. They show a restricted network of just over three thousand miles, though it is not absolutely certain whether the lines on these maps represent actual roads on the ground; tracks at least are certain to have existed. Written evidence is of little use in trying to establish the extent of the network though it does give some insight into the condition of medieval roads. Unfortunately, archaeological evidence, such a vital part of the evidence for the Roman road system, is entirely lacking, largely because very few new roads were built during the period, and because the tracks which existed then have been ploughed up or built over, often by more modern roads, leaving no trace of the medieval routes. The fact that virtually no new roads were built itself suggests that the roads and tracks inherited by the medieval population were adequate, and where none existed, new ones made themselves.

MEDIEVAL ROAD SYSTEM 221

The final map (Fig. 12) is still far from what must have existed. One possible approach at present being attempted by the author is to attempt to obtain a theoretical idea of the amount of commercial interaction between the towns of medieval EngIand and Wales, using a gravity model. The main difficulty is to obtain borough population figures which bear some resemblance to reality. It is hoped that such an approach might first quantify the importance of the known roads, and second indicate where routes not otherwise known ought to have existed in order to satisfy a commercial demand; research is continuing.

The other direction in which research can proceed is to look at smaller areas, at which level other types of evidence, such as bishops’ itineraries, place-names and even post-medieval maps, can be used in the reconstruction of the medieval road network.rll It is thus at the county level that a plea can be entered for further research to uncover in some detail exactly what happened to the road network between the departure of the Romans and the publication of Ogilby’s road book. At this level the study of routes on maps can, and indeed must, be supplemented by direct observation in the field, for although archaeological evidence is lacking, it is often easier when working in the field to envisage the choice of routes open to a medieval traveller than it is when sitting with a map in the comfort of one’s armchair.r21

Department of Economics and Geography University of Salford

[l] B. P. Hindle, “A geographical synthesis” op. cit. 160-84 [2] The author is grateful to Mr Reg Oliver of the Department of Economics and Geography,

University of Salford, for redrafting the original versions of the maps for this paper