But, in truth, cases of fortified cities are not to the point. What we want to find out is whether, in the rural districts, the British villages, with their open fields around them, were generally adopted by the Romans, and whether, having survived the Roman occupation, the Saxons adopted them in their turn.

e.g. in the Hitchin district.

It may be worth while to recur to the district from which was taken the typical example of the open fields, testing the point by such local evidence as may there be found.

The Icknild way and other ancient roads.

Among the ancient boundaries of the township of Hitchin, or rather of that part which included the now enclosed hamlet of Walsworth, was mentioned the Icknild way—that old British road which, passing from Wiltshire to Norfolk, here traverses the edge of the Chiltern hills. It sometimes winds lazily about uphill and down, following the line of the chalk downs. In many places it is merely a broad turf drift way. Here and there a long straight stretch of a mile or two suggests a Roman improvement upon [p426] its perhaps once more devious course. Here and there, too, are fragments of similar broad turf lanes leading nowhere, having lost the continuity which no doubt they once possessed. Sometimes crossing it, sometimes branching off from it, sometimes running parallel to it, are also frequently found similar winding broad turf drift ways, or straight roads of apparently British or Roman origin. It crosses Akeman Street at Tring, Watling Street at Dunstable, and Irmine Street at Royston. Neither Dunstable nor Royston, however, are examples of continuity, being comparatively modern towns, neither of them mentioned in the Domesday Survey. Hitchin lies about half-way between the cross-roads.

The district under its Belgic kings.

The district included in the annexed map, of which Hitchin is the centre, was a part of Belgic Britain. According to Cæsar this had been under the rule of the same king as Belgic Gaul, and upon the evidence of coins and certain passages in Roman writers, it is pretty well understood to have been, soon after the invasion of Cæsar, under the rule of Tasciovanus,[633] whose capital was Verulamium, and after him of his son Cunobeline, whose capital was Camulodunum. The sons of the latter (one of them Caractacus) were prevented from succeeding him by the advance of the Roman arms.[634] The intimate relations of the two capitals at Verulam and at Colchester explain the existence of the roads between them.

Maps of the Neighbourhood of Hitchin, The Hills at Meppershall, Litlington, and Toot Hill at Pirton.

See [Larger].
Go to: [List of Illustrations]