Part 3

Roman Lincolnshire has no written history. There is not a line in any extant ancient writer describing the progress of a Roman army within its limits. Yet that wonderful people have left indelible marks of their presence in the county, not merely, as elsewhere, in a few fortifications connected by military roads, but in the systematic reclamation of a whole district. The details remaining to us of their conquest of the island apply principally to the south-east, the north, and the north-west. And yet the marshy plain of the Lincolnshire coast must have been then, as it proved in later times, an ideal refuge for native tribes at last driven to bay. Bounded on the east by the sea and on the south by impassable fens—subject in parts to submersion by the sea—the county was only accessible to a southern invader on its south-west side, through the forest which then covered Kesteven. But the Roman conqueror was seldom daunted by natural obstacles; and some further explanation is needed of the fact that, in the earlier stages of the conquest, his efforts seem constantly deflected to the west. Some have fancied that the Romans recognised their most implacable enemies in the Druids, and that these priestly fanatics retreated westward before them until they were finally exterminated by Paulinus in their stronghold of Mona (Anglesey). A simpler hypothesis is that, like the Regni in Sussex and the Brigantes in Yorkshire, the inhabitants of our county at first propitiated the enemy by alliance and by giving hostages for good conduct.

The tribe which, according to Ptolemy (about A.D. 120), then occupied the counties of Lincoln, Leicester, and Nottingham, was the Coritani. If, as some have supposed, this tribe was a branch of the Eceni, it would almost certainly have been involved in the rebellion of Boudicca (A.D. 61). Yet for at least ten years we hear of no further expedition undertaken in this direction. If, on the other hand, the tribe was subject to or allied with its powerful northern neighbour, the Brigantes, it may possibly have been included in the compact which, before the year A.D. 50, was made by that tribe with the invader. Professor Rhys conjectures, rather hesitatingly,[11] that the Coritani may have been a remnant of the pre-Celtic population, and that their submission may have synchronised with the conquest of the warlike tribes of the southern midlands, to whom they had been subject.

Anyhow there is no positive indication that before A.D. 70 the Roman forces had penetrated into the eastern counties beyond the southern shore of the Wash. Some have fancied that the Coritani were subdued by Ostorius (A.D. 50-55), or Paulinus (A.D. 57-62). But the line of advance taken by both generals was to the north-west, along Watling Street, rather than due north; and Ostorius in particular is said to have established a chain of fortified camps—doubtless to secure his communications—from the Nene to the Severn. But when Petilius Cerealis assumed the command in the year A.D. 71, the peace with the Brigantes was broken, and Tacitus represents that the ensuing campaigns, of which he only says that “there were many battles and some not bloodless,” lasted the four years of this command. As his father-in-law, Agricola, was then in command of the Twentieth Legion, Tacitus must have known the facts, and may have reserved a full account of them for his _Histories_, but the portion of the work which deals with this war has not survived.

We do not know what were the headquarters of the Roman governors from A.D. 61 to 71, but they were almost certainly south of the Wash. An advance, therefore, against the Brigantes of Yorkshire must have brought them along the western branch of Ermine Street to Lincoln, as any good map will show. To the west they had the difficult country of the Peak, to the east the dreaded Fenland, and there is no direct road through Nottinghamshire to York. Starting from Durobrivæ (Castor)—which was perhaps the most easterly fort on the Nene, and as such occupied by the Ninth Legion in A.D. 61—and taking the line of road afterwards laid down, the army would at first bend to the north-west to avoid the immediate neighbourhood of the fens. Along this road, still traceable, and called in parts the “High Dyke,” there are camps at Casterton, Easton, and Ancaster, the last of which subsequently became an important station. At length, after traversing the high ground of the Cliff, the army would appear on the ridge of Canwick, facing the “Lincoln Gap.” On the crest of the opposite hill, from which they were separated by a flooded valley then reached by the tide, lay a strong British “oppidum.” It would be no light matter to take such a position by storm, but taken it was, whether by force or through a timely surrender. When once occupied, this stronghold would be turned into a military earthwork and used as a base of operations against the Brigantes, thus becoming the nucleus of the subsequent city. The advance into Yorkshire, if supported by a fleet, may have been made from the north gate of the camp by the direct line of Ermine Street to Winteringham on the Humber, for the Ouse was then navigable as far as York. But it seems more likely that this was a land expedition, and that the earliest road was that which leaves the main Ermine Street four miles north of Lincoln, and under its present name of Tillbridge Lane points direct to Littleborough on the Notts bank of the Trent. Here a camp would be formed, which developed later into the walled station Segelocum; here also was a ford which could soon be made available for the passage of an army. The banks were sloped away so as to make the descent easy to a raised causeway—paved with stones and held up by strong stakes driven into the bed of the river. This causeway, which was 18 feet wide, existed till 1820, when, owing to the obstruction it caused to navigation in dry seasons, it had to be removed; but part of the paved descent can still be seen on the farther bank. The reason why the road from Lincoln to this ford was not more direct is that it avoided the low land, then subject, as will be shown, to constant flooding from the Trent.

It was perhaps not till the governorship of Agricola (A.D. 78-85), when the country between the Humber and the Tyne was completely subdued, that Lindum became an important fortress. In his _Life of Agricola_ Tacitus names a provokingly small number of places in Britain; but he states that that general, in the second year of his command, “erected garrisons and fortresses among those tribes which had hitherto considered themselves a match for Rome.”[12] His, therefore, may have been the vigilant eye, which first discerned the strategic value of Lindum; but possibly it was Hadrian, or one of his commanders, who elevated it to the rank of a “colony.” This term was applied under the Empire to a settlement of veterans, which was held to form an integral part of Rome, and whose government was a copy in miniature of that of the capital. Each colony had its senate or “curia,” and annually elected two “duumviri,” corresponding to the consuls. A portion of the neighbouring land was assigned to each soldier, and the men were sometimes allowed, for a time at least, to retain their arms. If we may trust the “Ravenna” list of towns, the only “coloniæ” in Britain were Colchester, Lincoln, and Gloucester, and this was perhaps the order of their foundation. These colonies formed in themselves so strong a nucleus of Roman civilisation that they were seldom or never made garrison towns. The three headquarters of the legions—York, Chester, and Caerleon—were not colonies;[13] and there is no trace of a colony among the military stations on Hadrian’s Wall. The small number of these towns in Britain, and their intimate connection with Rome, indicate the great importance of Lindum. Another proof of this is the fact that the Foss Way, which, at least in part, is a work of the second century, seems to have been constructed with the express object of creating easy communication between Lincoln and the thickly-settled district of the south-west. No other town, except London, York, Colchester, and perhaps Cirencester, was connected with so many highways of the first class.

The existing remains of Lindum, though unfortunately much defaced by continuous occupation, fully corroborate this view. In the third and fourth centuries it was a kind of twin-city—the original “colonia,” about 37 acres in extent, occupying the brow of the hill, while the lower town, a sort of “annex” to the first, descended its slopes to the banks of the Witham. The original town must have been of great strength. Its northern and southern walls were about a quarter of a mile in length, and were each pierced by a gate—probably a double gate—through which the Ermine Street passed and bisected the city. The eastern and western walls were a little shorter—about 420 yards—and each had a gate in the centre, also probably double, with guard-rooms on each side of the central space. The walls were 10 feet thick and over 20 feet in height. Though obviously repaired at various times, it is likely that they were erected at the foundation of the colony, as the recent destruction of the unwalled Camulodunum would be a stern warning to the first colonists. A few fragments exist, none in a perfect state; but the inner face of the northern (now strangely called “Newport”) gate is still entire, though half buried in the soil, and is a unique monument of Roman rule in Britain. It consists of a central arch about 16 feet wide, which had two posterns, of which the eastern, though built over, still remains; the other was destroyed about a century ago. The gate was formerly supposed to have been single; but it stands 20 feet back from the neighbouring fragments of the wall; and an old engraving, here reproduced,[14] shows the remains of two arches on its northern side. Such double gates are a frequent feature in the stations on Hadrian’s Wall. The south and east gates were still standing at the end of the seventeenth century, at least in part. But the former, which was near the brink of Steep Hill, was pulled down soon after, though its eastern postern can still be seen within a house; while the latter, which stood just east of the Deanery, was only demolished in 1763. The western gate was accidentally discovered in 1836, buried beneath the high mound of the Castle. The arch was uncovered, and found to be of the same age as Newport; but it collapsed a few days later from the weight of the superincumbent earth, though fortunately not till the sketch of it here shown had been taken. From this it appears to have been exposed nearly as low as Newport without discovering posterns, which may have been absent from this gate, because no military road passed through it. Yet there were signs of a return wall, which indicate that the gate was double. The western wall followed the line of the Castle rampart and beyond it to the waterworks reservoir; the eastern passed under the chapter-house and the eastern transepts of the Minster.

The Forum was in the north-western quarter of the town, for the bases (and part of the shafts) of nineteen fine columns were found between 1878 and 1897 in Bailgate, standing in a line north and south, and fronting the course of Ermine Street. Of these five are double and one triple, and the space of 16 feet between two of the double columns—the sixth and seventh from the south—doubtless represents the street between the east and west gates; it is exactly in the line, and the side pavements were found much worn by the foot traffic. The building on the south side of this entrance to the Forum is thought to have been a temple; that on the north was probably a basilica, and a part of its northern wall—now called the Mint Wall—is still standing some 25 feet above-ground. It is 70 feet long and 3½ feet thick, and is formed of stone and of six courses of triple bonding tiles, with intervals of 5 feet between the upper courses. This building is supposed, from the red tint of the columns and the charred remains found at their base, to have been destroyed by fire. Along the centre of the city, parallel with Ermine Street, has been found a large main sewer, with branches running into it from right and left. The city was supplied with water by underground pipes from two springs—one on the hill outside the western wall, the other three-quarters of a mile away, on the Nettleham Road. From the latter the water was conducted, by pipes cemented together, into a neatly bricked well, called the Blind Well, which once existed a few yards north of the Assembly Rooms, but has now been filled up.

But the most interesting discovery in this quarter was that of the milestone dedicated to the Emperor Victorinus (one of the Thirty Tyrants), which was unearthed in 1879, and is now to be seen in the Lincoln Museum. It was found probably on its original site, where the cross street entered the Forum from Ermine Street. Victorinus held the supreme power in Gaul for little more than a year, so that the erection of this stone can be placed with certainty in A.D. 266-7.[15] This discovery confirms the reading “Segelocum” in the _Antonine Itinerary_, and also the distance there given. Some have thought that Carausius, the “Menapian admiral,” who seized the reins of power in Britain twenty years later under Diocletian, resided for some time in Lincoln. For this there is not much evidence. His coins, of which there are 300 known types, are common not in Lincolnshire only, but in all parts of England; and he is more likely to have established himself in London or near the south coast. But it is possible that the northern wall of Lindum, in which some of his coins have been found, was repaired in his time or a little later. Less than half a mile north of Newport Arch are to be seen remains of an earthen rampart, with a fosse on the northern side extending about 350 yards east and west, and with entrenchments running from the corners at right angles towards the city. Stukeley imagined that these were the defences of the British “oppidum”; but their shape and the practical certainty that the Britons would choose the edge of the hill leave little doubt that they are Roman outworks, possibly enclosing a northern suburb.

But the natural direction for the enlargement of the city would be the southern slope of the hill towards the river; and at some period—perhaps in the third or fourth century—the eastern and western walls were prolonged until they met a transverse wall, 50 yards from the river, at about the centre of which is the mediæval gate called the “Stone-bow.” Leaving the south-east corner of the original wall at the Cantilupe Chantry, the prolonged east wall descended the hill between the Vicar’s Court and the Bishop’s Palace (where part of it still exists), through the Temple Gardens, with the “Were Dyke” as its fosse, to the junction of Silver Street and Broadgate, where was a gateway, called Clasket Gate. Thence it was continued to a bastion, once called the Tower Garth, on the south side of St. Swithin’s Square. From this point the southern wall, which was lately uncovered in several places, extended to the “Stone-bow” and along Guildhall Street and Newland to its south-west corner at the (so-called) “Lucy” Tower, whence it ascended Motherby Hill to the western end of the original south wall at the corner of the Castle. This later town would be nearly double the size of the original colony, and the whole twin-city must have covered an area as large as that of Roman Colchester (108 acres). The walling of the lower city points to a sense of insecurity, but whether this arose from native disaffection or from a fear of foreign invasion there is no evidence to show. It probably contained no official buildings, and few important remains have come to light within it, but a hypocaust was found in 1782 near the top of High Street.

Space would fail us in enumerating the many lesser articles of interest discovered in Lincoln. Seven tessellated pavements have been found, all in the upper city; a perfect Roman altar, with inscription, came to light in 1884 on the site of St. Swithin’s Tower; and at least six sepulchral slabs have been unearthed, three of which were in memory of soldiers of the Ninth (Spanish) Legion—perhaps an indication that to this legion, which is not mentioned after Trajan’s reign, lands were assigned at the foundation of the colony. Traces of interments have been found bordering the roads on the north, east, and south of the city; those beyond the east gate seem to be the most numerous, and in one case the remains were enclosed in a large burial-chamber. In the immediate neighbourhood of the city were villas of some size. At Canwick Church there is a tessellated pavement, two feet below the floor-level, extending the whole length of the nave; and at Greetwell, a mile and a half to the east, a substantial residence was discovered, with many rooms and corridors, and with pavements of artistic design.

In the three centuries between Ptolemy, who first mentions the city, and the abandonment of Britain by Rome, Lindum is named but once—in the _Antonine Itinerary_. But it seems likely that Adelfius, one of the three British prelates at the Council of Arles, was its bishop in 314.[16]

With regard to the roads radiating from Lindum, it will be convenient to deal first with those to the north. From Newport Gate, Ermine Street continues to the Humber for thirty miles in a direct line—absolutely straight, indeed, for five-sixths of the distance. Mr. Codrington assumes without reason that this road was earlier than that already mentioned, which crossed the Trent and passed by way of Doncaster and Castleford to York.[17] Present appearances certainly justify his view, for the latter road now seems merely a branch of the former. But this may not always have been the case. Originally the first four miles may have been nearer the edge of the high ground through Burton and North Carlton into Tillbridge Lane; but when the direct Ermine Street was constructed this portion would not be repaired, and therefore would be completely disused, as the increase in distance by the new road would be trifling. It is a curious fact that the only section of Ermine Street between London and the Humber included in the _Antonine Itinerary_ is that between Lincoln and Godmanchester; the route from Lincoln to York in two Iters (V. and VIII.) is by the Doncaster road, which is longer than Ermine Street by several miles if York were the objective, but which rather points directly to Isurium—supposed by some to have been the Brigantian capital.[18] The presumption should surely be that the shorter route, which involved the crossing of a broad estuary, would be a later construction of more settled times. In the parish of Scampton, adjoining the Doncaster road, and about a mile and a half north-west of the point where it branches from Ermine Street, was discovered in 1795 a large Roman villa, with forty rooms and thirteen tessellated pavements—one of a very beautiful design. The whole building covered a space 70 yards square, and included two courtyards, thus differing somewhat in plan from the great villas of the south-west.

Ermine Street from Lincoln to the Humber is one of the finest of Roman highways—clearly traceable to-day for almost the whole distance. In a stretch of thirty miles there must have been a middle station, which was certainly in Hibaldstow; but since remains have been found here on both sides of the great “Way,” its exact site is uncertain. At the farm of Gainsthorpe, about 200 yards to the west, is a remarkable cluster of ruined habitations, which has never been properly explored: excavation here, and in a large camp a little to the north on the east side of Ermine Street, promises to yield fruitful results. From this point there would naturally be a by-road to Caistor, ten miles due east across the Ancholme valley, but no traces of it are on record. A pavement has been found in Hibaldstow, and two more at Storton in Scawby—the next parish to the north. The line of the road passes through Broughton, three miles west of Brigg, where various remains have been discovered; and the country round it, as it approaches the Humber, abounded in rural residences of the better class. At Roxby, a mile and a half to the west, a good pavement was found in 1709; and about forty years later, three more of very superior design were discovered below the Cliff House in Winterton, one of which had a bust of Ceres in the centre. A fourth near the same spot, with a figure of Apollo, was unearthed in 1797; and in a garden at Horkstow, more than three miles east of this site, was found a pavement with three compartments, in which are depicted the Fates, Orpheus playing the lyre to the animals, and a chariot race. Among the remains found at Winterton are many coins, spear-heads, a brass eagle, and a potter’s kiln; while another kiln was found at Santon in Appleby, a few miles to the south. This district—as also the chalk ridges of the Eastern Wolds—seems to have been favourable for the manufacture of the coarse grey and stone-coloured pottery, so common on Roman sites in the county. The Ermine Street ended at a promontory overlooking the Humber in the parish of Winteringham, below which was an ancient haven called Flashmire, now silted up. This point is a little east of the Roman “station” of Brough on the opposite shore, so that boats could make the crossing of under two miles with the inflowing tide. In the dry summer of 1826, when the water was low, a paved causeway or jetty—like that leading to the Trent at Littleborough—was exposed on both the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire banks. Stukeley says that, when the “station” at Winteringham was ploughed up in 1700, extensive remains were found—as of stone foundations, pavements, and streets made of gravel and sea-sand. About four miles south-west of this point, and half-way to the Roman Camp at Barton, lies South Ferriby. Here is an ancient well-spring, near which at various times interesting articles have been found—some, perhaps, votive offerings to the local goddess of the spring. These objects, now principally in the Hull Museum, include cinerary urns of all kinds, fireplaces, coins, and a remarkable collection of bronze _fibulæ_—many harp-shaped (two with the Gaulish maker’s name, “Aucissa”) and others flat, with the disc in the shape of a fish or sandal. From Winteringham there may have been a branch-way to Barton—seven miles to the east. At Alkborough, about four miles westward, there is a strong camp, about one hundred yards square, overlooking the junction of the Trent and the Humber. Its Roman origin is disputed, and the area has never been carefully excavated.

Returning once more to Lincoln, we find at least one road leaving the east gate of the city, which is nearly identical with the present Wragby road. This was in line with the Foss Way, but was of much less importance. At Claybridge, about seven miles from Lincoln, a by-way branches off south-eastwards to the fort at Horncastle; while another, called Horncastle Lane, which is probably Roman, bends westward to the junction of Ermine Street and Tillbridge Lane. The main way continues north-eastward through Ludford and Ludborough to the coast, where it ends at some remains of saltworks in the parish of Grainthorpe. Its easterly part used to be known as “Salters’ Lane,” and it crosses the “High Street” from Horncastle to Caistor at Ludford. It is possible that this route and a branch-way from Ermine Street were the only roads from Lincoln to Caistor; at least no traces of a road, or even of Roman remains, are known to me on the direct line between the east gate and Caistor.