London Before the Conquest

by W. R. Lethaby

In his letter to Wren Dr. Woodward says that in several places lying near by in a line, particularly on this side of Shooters’ Hill, where the country is low, there remained a raised highway 40 feet wide and 4 feet high. According to Allen’s history a portion of the Roman way leading to Stangate was found just north of Newington Church in 1824.

Stukeley thought that the west-to-east road, over the present Oxford Street, originally passed to the north of London into Essex (by Old Street), “because London was not then considerable, but in a little time Holborn was struck out from it, entering the city at Newgate, and so to London-Stone, the Lapis Milliaris, and hence the reason why the name of Watling Street is still preserved in the city.”

There can be no doubt that Stukeley’s account of the Roman roads is generally true, but the theory of the great road by Old Street seems unlikely, although the latter is quite certainly a Roman way, and was called Ealde Street in the twelfth century.[55] The Roman road has been found 11 feet below the surface, together with Roman coins.[56] There cannot be 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 century,[57] is probably, like the gate through which it passed, Roman too. Stow’s hypothesis that Old Street branched away from the top of Aldersgate Street seems best to meet the case. Stukeley’s suggestion about the naming of “Watling Street” in the city, which has been so embroidered upon by recent writers, seems, as we shall show ([p. 150]), to be a mistake.

It is asserted in a fourteenth-century document quoted by Lysons that the great east road passed the Lea by Old Ford before Matilda built Bow Bridge; but this has no weight in excluding the road by Aldgate against the 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 London from Barking through Stratford after a miraculous passage of the Lea. There may have been a road by Old Street and Old Ford, but there must have been a road by Holborn and Whitechapel through Newgate and Aldgate.[59]

The branch from the great Watling Street to the city, by Tyburn and St. Andrew’s Holborn, is described in a charter giving in Saxon the boundaries of Westminster, dated 951, but not original. This charter, even if forged, can hardly be later than the era of the Conquest, when the coterminous manor of Eya was given to the 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 ditch to Cuforde. From Cuforde along the Tyburn to the Here Straet, and by it to the Stock of St. Andrew’s Church, then in London Fen south to Midstream of Thames, and by land and strand to the Merfleet.” Here Street is the usual Saxon name for a Roman road, but it will be convenient to use it in this case as a proper name.

The stream of Tyburn crossed Oxford Street just west of Stratford Place, and ran through the Green Park, and so to the west of Westminster. Cufford I find again, 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 valley. A bridge is shown here in Faithorne’s map. The Here Street or military road is of course Oxford Street and Holborn, and London-Fen is the Fleet valley.[62]

The manor of Tyburn appears in Domesday. There can be no doubt as to the identification of the Here Street, for a document of 1222 gives as the boundaries of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, the water of Tyburn running to the Thames and the Strata 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 Ashford, it has been found.[63] An under road to Kensington, etc., by Knightsbridge must also have been ancient. Knightsbridge is named in a twelfth-century charter, and it seems to be the same as the Kingsbridge in a charter of the Confessor.[64]

From the fact that the Antonine Itinerary gives two routes to Lincoln,—one round to the west by the Watling Street, and one to the east by Colchester,—it seems probable that the direct Erming Street was made in the later Roman era.

The best critical account of the four Roman ways is in Origines Celticæ and the Archæological Journal for 1857, in which Dr. Guest, working from charters, verifies their position. He considers that the portion of the Erming Street between London and Huntingdon was not a Roman paved road, although “it must have existed in the days of Edgar, and perhaps as early as the times of Offa.” “Tracks of an ancient causey may still be found alongside the turnpike road which leads from London to Royston,” beyond which the road passes straight on over the fens to a place called Ermingford in Domesday and Earmingaford in a charter of Edgar. To the south of London he lays down a “Stone Street” from Chichester through Bignor (Roman villa) and Dorking. In vol. ix. of Archæologia, 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 Camden speaks of it as “the old military road of the Romans called Stone Street.” It was “some 30 feet broad and some 4 or 5 feet thick of stones.” Considerable vestiges of this Roman road may even now be traced on the Ordnance Survey; approaching London it evidently passed through Epsom, Ewell, Merton, Tooting, and Clapham. Here then we have a great road from Chichester through Surrey over London Bridge and by Stamford Hill to Lincoln—the Erming Street. It seems impossible that such a work could have been undertaken in the time of the “Heptarchy,” and it must be a Roman road made subsequently to the Antonine Itinerary.

When London Bridge was built, or when a regular ferry over the Thames was established on this line, a new connection with the Canterbury Road (Watling Street) was evidently called for, and this link was provided by Kent Street (now Great Dover Street). Bagford, in his letter to Hearne, says that the Roman approach 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, where, as old views show, there cannot have been a street in the Middle Ages. The highway from the bridge going southwards really ran straight through the borough (Burh or South-work), and deflected on to Kent Street at St. George’s Church, which stood here early in the twelfth century (see Southwark, below, [p. 110]).