Roman Period.
There are no Roman remains at Coniston; but a great Roman road passed just to the north of the township from the camp, still visible, at Ambleside, through Little Langdale, over Wrynose and Hardknott to the camp at Hardknott Castle, and so down Eskdale to the port of Ravenglass, where at Walls Castle there are the site of a camp and the ruin of a Roman villa. It is possible that a trackway used in Roman times passed through Hawkshead, for fragments of Roman brick have been found at Hawkshead Hall and a coin at Colthouse (see Mrs. H. S. Cowper's Hawkshead and its Neighbourhood: Titus Wilson, Kendal, sixpence).
There is a tradition that the Coniston coppermines were worked by the Romans; but there is no evidence to prove it. One point that tends to suggest the possibility of such a belief is that about the year 85 A.D., soon after Agricola had overcome all this part of the country, a certain savant, Demetrius of Tarsus, fellow-townsman of St. Paul and not much his junior, was sent by the Emperor Domitian to Britain, it would seem for the purpose of enquiring into its products, especially in metals (Canon Raine, York, p. 17). Two bronze tablets, dedicated by this Demetrius to the gods Oceanus and Tethys, were found at York, and are now in the museum there; and on his return from these savage regions he went to Delphi and told his traveller's tales to Plutarch, who mentions the fact in his treatise On the Cessation of Oracles. It might be said that these rich copper mines could hardly fail to attract the notice of the conquerors; of whom their own Tacitus says, speaking of their disappointment in the pearl fishery of Britain—"I could more easily believe that the pearls are amiss, than that we Romans are wanting in 'commercial enterprise.'" Avaritia is the old cynic's word, in the life of Agricola, chap. 12.