Part 4

No road of any importance seems to have left Lincoln by the west gate; and the reason for this is to be found in the physical features of the neighbourhood at the time of the Roman occupation. The part of Lincolnshire north of the Witham is still called “Lindsey”—a name which indicates by its final syllable that, when it was given, the district was practically surrounded by water. On all sides but the south it is so to this day—viz. by the sea on the east, by the Humber on the north, and by the Trent on the west. In the Roman period—and indeed for many centuries after—the Witham was tidal as far as the narrow “Gap” between Lincoln and the opposite high land of Kesteven. Geologists tell us that this “Gap,” now intersected by the Witham, was in pre-glacial ages scooped out by the Trent, the course of which from Newark was then north-east instead of north; and that after that river had been “captured” by the Humber (_i.e._ diverted into its present bed by the opening of a longitudinal valley from the north) it would always tend to revert to its original course in time of flood. The result of this constant flooding was the formation of a large mere, extending from the western end of the Gap as far north as Brampton, beyond which the east bank of the Trent was too high for the water to escape. The first syllable of Lindum no doubt represents the Celtic word, which was applied to this large sheet of water. Faint remains of it can still be seen in the small pool of Brayford—just below the south gate of the lower city. The flood-water came through five openings in a low range of sandhills between Spaldford and Brampton; and the first work of the Roman engineers was to build banks across these openings, and so shut out the water of the Trent. The southernmost opening at Spaldford—the most dangerous because the highest up the valley—was closed by a bank from 12 to 15 feet high and a mile and a half in length.

Through the marsh which was left when the water disappeared the Romans constructed a navigable canal, now called the Fossdyke, between the Witham and the Trent. Its original course at the western end was, according to Stukeley, more direct than at present—joining the Trent not, as now, at Torksey, but about two miles farther south. From its bed was dredged up in 1774 a small bronze statue of Mars, with a Latin inscription. At Lincoln itself the Sincil Dyke, a drain of the “Slaker” type—to ease off the water in time of flood—was constructed connecting the upper and lower ends of the loop which is made by the Witham in order to pass through the Gap. These operations certainly took place at a very early period of the Roman occupation of Lincoln. For until they were made effective, it would be impossible to lay the line of the Foss Way between Lincoln and Leicester; and we know from a milestone discovered on that road three miles north of Leicester, and dedicated to Hadrian in A.D. 120 (when he was in Britain), that the eastern part of the Foss Way—doubtless the earliest made in order to connect Lincoln with Watling Street—was being laid down in the first quarter of the second century. In the valley below Lincoln, Ermine Street and the Foss Way, which were united for the crossing, traversed the marshes of the Gap on a pile-foundation.

But the chief anxiety of a Roman general, who would secure the submission or tranquillity of this part of Britain, must have been the condition of the Fen district along the lower reaches of the Witham, and beyond it to the south. If the Coritani had to be subdued by force of arms, as we have supposed, their subjugation must have been a long business. Moreover, the Romans were experienced agriculturists, and must have guessed the value of the rich fenland east and south-east of their colony. On that side there was doubtless an even larger mere than on the west—caused partly by the flood-water which had overflowed the Gap, partly by streams from the high land of Kesteven; and this sheet of water must have risen considerably in height during the spring-tides. In this mere for many miles the stream of the Witham must have been barely discernible. Below it the district of Holland was a vast morass, liable to inundation both by the sea and by the rivers—then of much larger volume than now—which fell into the Wash. It is not likely that this district was largely settled by the natives before the Romans came, and the British antiquities found are few; but it was a natural refuge for the disaffected—as was shown later during the Danish and Norman invasions. Herodian says[19] of the campaign in Scotland in 209 that the Emperor Severus made passage for his troops over the fens, where, “from the frequent overflowing of the ocean, the inhabitants will swim and walk, though up to their middle in water.”

The engineering skill needed to cope with this situation was very great; and if proof be required that the Romans exercised it, the answer is sufficient that neither before nor for a thousand years after this period was there a central organisation strong enough to carry out such operations. The work had to be of two kinds—draining, to carry off the flood-water and void the rainfall coming from the high land, and embanking, to shut out the sea. In the former the Romans acted upon sound principles, which were often neglected in after times. They used the natural rivers as arterial drains, and led the subsidiary drains into them. History records that they executed similar works in other parts of the Empire. The Pontine marshes and the Lombard valley of the Po were drained under the Republic. The Emperors Claudius and Hadrian began and completed a canal between the Fucine Lake and the Liris. In the Low Countries, Drusus, in 12 B.C., drew a channel connecting Lake Flevo (Zuyder Zee) and the Rhine; and in A.D. 47 Corbulo made a canal, twenty-three miles in length, between the Rhine and the Meuse. Eleven years later a project for uniting the Saone and the Moselle, and thus completing a waterway from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, was only not attempted from fear of the jealousy of Nero. If a full account was ever written of the Roman settlement of Britain, the operations now to be described must have filled a large place in it.

The present channel of the Witham from Lincoln to Boston is much too straight to have ever been the course of a natural stream. From Chapel Hill just below Dogdyke, where there was a tidal creek, the river was canalised to Boston as late as 1761; but there is no record in historical times of such an operation in the twenty miles from Lincoln to Dogdyke. In order to drain the lower mere described above, a channel was cut along the high land for that distance, and the upper waters of the river directed into it. In very early (perhaps in Roman) times there was another branch of the Witham due east from Dogdyke through the upper fen to Wainfleet, where it received the Steeping, and thence into the sea near Gibraltar Point. Very probably it was the draining of the district near Lincoln which hastened the silting up of this ancient channel. But at no time can it have been, as some have fancied,[20] the principal outfall of the river, for it is much farther from the sea, and could not have been tidal, like the other, for the whole distance.

The most remarkable monument of Roman engineering in the Fens is the catchwater drain called the Cardyke (_Brit._ “fen-dyke”), which leaves the Witham at Washingborough about three miles from Lincoln, and then for eighteen miles takes a southerly course parallel to that river at distances varying from two to five miles from it. The primary object may have been to intercept the water of the numerous streams coming from the Kesteven uplands; but it was doubtless intended to be navigable, as its width at the water-level was 50 feet, and at its bottom 30 feet. On both sides was a raised bank, flattened at the top to serve the purpose of a road, and still in some places crowned with a modern road. In the parish of Heckington, nine miles due west of Boston, it makes a sharp turn to the south-west, and then skirts the western border of the Fen for over thirty miles, till, after a course of fifty-six miles, it joins the river Nene, half a mile south-east of Peterborough, and about five miles below the Roman town of Durobrivæ (Castor). In some parts the Cardyke has been obliterated, and in many it is now a mere ditch; but its whole course can be exactly traced, and for a few miles it is still used as a drain. The last eight miles are beyond the borders of our county; but within those borders Roman remains have been found in at least ten parishes through which it passes. No vestiges can be found of the seven forts alleged by Stukeley to have been raised along its course, but there is a camp at North Kyme, within a short distance. Even with the aid of forced labour—partly, perhaps, imported from the Continent—such a work must have taken many years to construct; and it may have been in progress during a great part of the century between Trajan and Severus (A.D. 100-210). Its long course, parallel to the canalised channel of the Witham, suggests that its northern portion was first undertaken to assist in draining the mere south-east of Lincoln. But when this object was accomplished, and the immense work was taken in hand of embanking the shores of the Wash, the canal would gradually be extended southward in order to provide an inland waterway past Lincoln, by the Fossdyke, the Trent, and the Ouse, to the northern capital at York. This measure could hardly have been contemplated until the Holland Fen was sufficiently dry to admit of causeways being made across it into Lindsey on the north and Norfolk on the east.

The seabanks in Holland and East Lindsey, which are now called the “Roman Banks,” extend by a most circuitous route for about a hundred and fifty miles from Wisbech nearly to Grimsby. Tradition ascribes them to the Romans; and as their bases are deeply buried in silt, they are evidently of pre-Norman origin. Mr. Skertchly has estimated that at least eleven million tons of material must have been used in their construction. His collaborator, Mr. Miller,[21] suggests that this stupendous work may have been partly executed before the Roman invasion. But as this idea rests upon two very uncertain conjectures—(1) that the Coritani were Germans from the Low Countries with a knowledge of embanking, and (2) that they may have learnt engineering from the Greek colonies in Gaul, it may be dismissed as improbable. The tribal natives, whatever their state of civilisation, could hardly do more than provide a core of clay, upon which the banks of blown sand could gradually form. It has been well pointed out that the Roman Banks are not works of such a kind as could be carried out in portions, and spread over a number of years.[22] “The enclosure of a large tract covered by the spring-tides is a work that requires great vigour, and must be carried on continuously, or the earth put into the bank during one set of tides will be washed away again.” That is to say, it is a work which would require a strong, and even despotic, central authority. In the fen south of Boston there is a succession of about twenty tumuli, called the Fen Mounds, which are all within about three miles of the ancient banks, and some of which are called “toot” (or “look-out”) hills. They have been supposed to be British,[23] but only one of this southern series is crowned with a circular entrenchment, and it seems much more likely that they were raised to protect the bankmakers from a surprise attack.

The Romans do not seem to have reaped much fruit from their labours, except perhaps in the complete pacification of the district. Holland affords but few traces of their settlement, except in pottery and coins found along the line of the banks, as at Holbeach, Fleet, Heckington, and Swineshead. There was an important oblong camp on the Witham at Redstone Gowt, about a furlong south of Boston, where remains have been found. Its importance was due to the two circumstances that here was a ferry in connection with the road called the Saltway into the Midlands, and that at this point a canal, now called the Old Hammond Beck, took over some of the Witham water due west round the end of Bicker Haven to Swineshead, and thence, taking a sharp curve, after a southerly course of thirteen miles, fell into the river Glen at Pinchbeck. This canal was here parallel to the Cardyke at distances of from four to six miles. It could not have been made until the seabank had been thrown up all round Bicker Haven to keep out the tides. The course of these banks show the enormous amount of land near the Wash—about 64,000 acres—that has since been gained by accretion. The Wash, called by Ptolemy “Metaris Æstuarium,” was a bay with an entrance some two miles narrower than at present, into which fell the waters of four tidal rivers—the Ouse, the Nene, the Welland, and the Witham. The Seabank, starting from Wisbech on the Nene estuary, proceeds north for about ten miles, and then curves round west to the Welland estuary below Spalding. But about eight miles farther south is another westerly bank, parallel to the first, from Cowbit to Tydd St. Mary. This bank, called “Ravenbank,” was probably used as a road from Ermine Street into Norfolk, and south of it, between the Welland and the Nene, are three entrenchments, a few miles apart, where Roman remains have been found. About Spalding, where the Westlode—an ancient drain now filled up—fell into the Welland, the Seabank turns north to Surfleet, and then, running west, north, and east to encircle Bicker Haven, reaches the Witham at Redstone Gowt. From this point it can be traced north to Wainfleet, and thence, with intervals, to beyond the entrance to the Humber opposite Spurn Point. Its character varies considerably in different places. Between Boston and Skegness it often appears too broad to be artificial; but in general it is only a few yards wide, at an elevation of from 10 to 20 feet, and is frequently used as a modern road.

Some of these banks were doubtless used also by the Romans as roads, not for wheeled vehicles, but for pack horses in connection with the salt industry. The Romans were well acquainted with the manufacture of salt by evaporating sea water in pans or reservoirs prepared for the purpose. The flat coasts of Lincolnshire are especially favourable to this industry. Remains of such pans can still be detected on Bicker Haven, which is many miles from the present sea-shore; but the principal saltworks appear to have been at Wainfleet St. Mary, just outside the Roman Bank. If Ptolemy’s “Salinæ” is to be placed in Lincolnshire, as some suppose, no spot is so likely as Wainfleet. There was an ancient road into the Fen called the Saltway, or Bridge End Causeway, which crossed the Cardyke between Swaton and Bridge End. It is found on both sides of Bicker Haven, which must have been crossed by a ferry, and thence it points north-east through Frampton and Wyberton to Redstone Gowt and the Seabank beyond the Witham. If this be a Roman way—and remains found along its course in Kesteven seem to prove the fact—it probably belonged to the late Roman period, after the seabanks round the Wash had been completed. But the Wainfleet saltworks may have been developed much earlier, and the salt conveyed by road through Lindsey to Horncastle and Lincoln. Oysters were another commodity that could be procured from the Boston Deeps, though they were not of so fine a quality as those from the Richborough beds, which delighted the epicures of Rome.

One immediate result of the draining and embanking of the Fens would be the more complete occupation of the forest or heath district of Kesteven. That district was intersected by two branches of Ermine Street, which both start from Castor, and may have united at Lincoln. The eastern branch, which enters the county at West Deeping and runs along the high land parallel to the Cardyke for over twenty miles, is the shorter in actual distance; but it was not the main route, and the branch-ways from it across the Fen indicate that it was the later in date. South of Bourn, where was a camp close to the Cardyke, it is known in parts as Langdyke, High Street, and King Street; between Bourn and Sleaford it is generally called Mareham Lane. There was a by-way from it at Morton, which has been traced to the western branch at Great Ponton; and at Threckingham it is crossed from the east by the Saltway just mentioned. On each side of the latter way, about four miles west of Threckingham, tessellated pavements have been found at Haceby and Aisby; and after crossing the western branch at Cold Harbour,[24] near Grantham, the Saltway passes south-west into Leicestershire. At a ford near Sleaford, where coins and much pottery indicate that there was some kind of station, the eastern branch is within six miles of the western at Ancaster; and there was doubtless a cross-road between them, as interments have been found at Rauceby and coins at Bully Wells.

Ancaster, on the western branch of the Ermine Street, is one of those sites which, from a military camp on a main southern route, rose to be a small town, with a population probably engaged in agriculture. It is now generally identified with Causennæ, the station next to Lincoln in the fifth Iter of the _Itinerary_; but its distance from the colony is only fourteen miles instead of the twenty-six there given. No traces of walls are now visible above-ground, and even Leland, nearly four hundred years ago, spoke doubtfully as to their existence; but since his time their foundations have been met with on the north and west sides. The boundaries of the station, which was nearly square, and was surrounded by a fosse 50 feet wide and 10 feet deep, can still be distinctly seen; and it was defended at the corners by circular towers, the outlines of which on the north-west and south-east are well defined. The area enclosed is about six acres; and the course of Ermine Street, which intersects it, is near the western boundary. This suggests that the town was extended, before the erection of its walls, up the slope towards the east. Its position, on much lower ground than the heights around, was probably chosen partly to provide shelter from the bleak winds of the heath, partly for the sake of two springs which are close to its northern and southern limits. From a description of the place in 1579, it appears that pavements and “arches” had then been discovered within it; but a large part of the area, called the “Castle Close,” has long been under grass. It needs no practised eye to detect that there are foundations beneath the uneven turf, and systematic excavation might yield discoveries of much interest. An immense quantity of coins were found in Stukeley’s time not only within the area but about the surrounding hills. But the most remarkable object—unearthed in the churchyard in 1831—was a small sculptured group of the three _Deæ Matres_, seated in a _sella_ carved upon a plinth, with a column and a little incense altar on the base in front of them. Statues of these “Protecting Mothers”—who were provincial rather than Roman deities—have been found at the Wall stations of Chester and Birdoswald; there, however, the figures are separate, and not ranged in a single _sella_. The cemetery of Causennæ seems to have been just outside the southern gate, while north of the village has been found a potter’s kiln and a small milliary with an inscription to Constantine the Great. The latter was not on its original site, and its base had been broken off.[25] On a high hill in Honington, about two miles south-west of Ancaster, is a small British camp, with a triple vallum almost circular, enclosing about an acre and a quarter. This was doubtless occupied by the Romans, for two urns full of coins have been found within it. There was probably a cross-road west of Ancaster, communicating with the Foss Way at East Bridgford (Margidunum) in Nottinghamshire. Coins and pottery have been found at Foston and Allington along the direct line; and the Sewstern grass lane, locally supposed to be Roman, joins it from the south-east.

The eastern branch of Ermine Street can be traced for about four miles north of Sleaford, but its subsequent course is unknown. At or near Sleaford it threw off a branch-way, which passes through Ewerby and North Kyme (where it crosses the Cardyke), and points towards Tattershall and Horncastle. At North Kyme, where two bronze leaf-shaped swords have been found, is a small camp with a double vallum, and two more are on record in Tattershall Park. These entrenchments are in a position to protect the draining operations in the upper fen. Nine miles to the north is Horncastle (in mediæval documents always written Horncastre), which was a _castellum_, or walled fort, built in the angle (Saxon “Hyrn”) formed by two streams, the Bane and the Waring. The Celtic name of the chief stream is responsible for its identification with the “Banovallum” of the anonymous Ravennas. A few detached portions of the wall can still be seen, showing its area to have been about four and a half acres, with its longer sides (about 200 yards in length) on the north and south. The masonry is rude, but probably only the core remains, the facing-stones having been removed for building purposes in later ages. The only remains known to have been found are coins, pottery, and some leaden coffins outside the walls. This fort may have been built in the first century if coins are any indication of date, for among a large number, covering the whole Roman period, about ten belong to that century. If so, it may have been purely military in origin—built in order to overawe the natives of the Southern Wolds, and so serving the same object as Caistor among those of the north.