Chapter 18

_How the Roman Occupation of Britain affected the Forest and Vale of Pickering_

B.C. 55 to A.D. 418

The landings of Julius Caesar, in 55 and 54 B.C., and the conflicts between his legions and the southern tribes of Britain, were little more, in the results obtained, than a reconnaissance in force, and Yorkshire did not feel the effect of the Roman invasion until nearly a century after the first historic landing.

The real invasion of Britain began in A.D. 43, when the Emperor Claudius sent Aulus Plautius across the Channel with four legions; and after seven years of fighting the Romans, taking advantage of the inter-tribal feuds of the Britons, had reduced the southern half of England to submission.

Plautius was succeeded by Ostorius Scapula in A.D. 50, and from Tacitus[1] we learn that he "found affairs in a troubled state, the enemy making irruptions into the territories of our allies, with so much the more insolence as they supposed that a new general, with an army unknown to him, and now that the winter had set in, would not dare to make head against them." Scapula, however, vigorously proceeded with the work of subjugation, and having overcome the Iceni of East Anglia and the Fen Country, he was forcing his way westwards into Wales when he heard of trouble brewing in the North. "He had approached near the sea which washes the coast of Ireland," says Tacitus, "when commotions, begun amongst the Brigantes, obliged the general to return thither." The Brigantes were the powerful and extremely fierce tribe occupying Yorkshire, Durham, Cumberland, and Westmorland, and among them were the people whose remains are so much in evidence near Pickering. They had probably been under tribute to the Romans, and their struggle against the invaders in this instance does not appear to have been well organised, for we are told that when the Romans arrived in their country, they "soon returned to their homes, a few who raised the revolt having been slain, and the rest pardoned." We also know that in A.D. 71 Petilius Cerealis attacked the Brigantes and subdued a great part of their country; and as the Romans gradually brought the tribe completely under their control, they established the camps and constructed the roads of which we find so many evidences to-day. The inhabitants of the hills surrounding the Vale of Pickering were overawed by a great military station at Cawthorne on a road running north and south from that spot. It may have been the Delgovicia mentioned in the first Antonine Iter., and in that case Malton would have been Derventione, and Whitby, or some spot in Dunsley Bay, would have been Prætorio, but at the present time there is not sufficient data for fixing these names with any certainty. It has also been supposed by General Roy[2] that Cawthorne was occupied by the famous 9th legion after they had left Scotland, owing to the similarity of construction between the most westerly camp at Cawthorne and the one at Dealgin Ross in Strathern, where the 9th legion were supposed to have had their narrow escape from defeat by the Caledonians during Agricola's sixth campaign. But this also is somewhat a matter of speculation.

[Footnote 1: Tacitus, the Oxford Translation, revised 1854, vol. 1, book xii. pp. 288-90.]

[Footnote 2: Roy, Major Gen. William: "The Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain," 1793, Plate xi.]

Coming to the firmer ground of the actual remains of the Roman roads and camps, we find that traces of a well-constructed road, locally known as Wade's Causeway, have been discovered at various points on a line drawn from Malton to Cawthorne and Whitby. Some of these sections of the road have disappeared since Francis Drake described them in 1736,[2] and at the present time the work of destruction continues at intervals when a farmer, converting a few more acres of heather into potatoes, has the ill-luck to strike the roadway.

[Footnote 2: Drake, Francis: "Eboracum," p. 36.]

In the month of January this year (1905), I examined a piece of ground newly taken under cultivation at Stape. It was about half a mile north of the little inn and just to the west of Mauley Cross. The stones were all thrown out of their original positions and a pile of them had been taken outside the turf wall for road-mending and to finish the walls against the gate posts, but the broad track of the roadway, composed of large odd-shaped stones, averaging about a foot in width, was still strikingly in evidence--a mottled band passing straight through the chocolate-coloured soil.

All who have described the road state that on each side of the causeway where it remains undisturbed there is a line of stones placed on their edges in order to keep the stones in place, but in this instance the stones were too much disturbed to observe their original formation. Among the furrows I discovered quantities of flint-flakes, indicating the manufacture of stone implements on this site, no flints being naturally found in the neighbourhood.

The road went through the most perfectly constructed of the three square camps at Cawthorne from west to east, cutting through one corner of the adjacent oval camp. It then seems to have passed down the slack a little to the north-east, and crossing the stream below (probably in Roman times by a wooden bridge) it takes a fairly straight course for the little hamlet of Stape just mentioned. The slope from the camps is extremely steep, and in 1817, when Dr Young wrote his "History of Whitby," he tells us that there were no traces of the road at that point. Going back to 1736, however, we find that Drake, in his "History of York" published in that year, says, "At the foot of the hill began the road or causeway, very plain"; he also tells us that he first heard of the road, with the camp upon it, from Mr Thomas Robinson of Pickering--"a gentleman well versed in this kind of learning." Drake, enthusiastically describing his examination of the road, says, "I had not gone a hundred paces on it, but I met with a _mile stone_ of the _grit kind_, a sort not known in this country. It was placed in the midst of the causeway, but so miserably worn, either by sheep or cattle rubbing against it, or the weather, that I missed of the inscription, which, I own, I ran with great eagerness to find. The causeway is just twelve foot broad, paved with a flint pebble [probably very hard limestone], some of them very large, and in many places it is as firm as it was the first day, a thing the more strange in that not only the distance of time may be considered, but the total neglect of repairs and the boggy rotten moors it goes over. In some places the _agger_ is above three foot raised from the surface. The country people curse it often for being almost wholly hid in the ling, it frequently overturns their carts laden with turf as they happen to drive across it. It was a great pleasure to me to trace this wonderful road, especially when I soon found out that it pointed to the bay aforesaid. I lost it sometimes by the interposition of valleys, rivulets, or the exceeding great quantity of ling growing on these moors. I had then nothing to do but observe the line, and riding crossways, my horse's feet, through the ling, informed me when I was upon it. In short, I traced it several miles, and could have been pleased to have gone on with it to the seaside, but my time would not allow me. However, I prevailed upon Mr Robinson to send his servant, and a very intelligent person of _Pickering_ along with him, and they not only made it fairly out to _Dunsley_, but brought me a sketch of the country it went through with them. From which I have pricked it out in the map, as the reader will find at the end of this account."

I have examined Drake's map but find that he has simply ruled two perfectly straight parallel lines between Cawthorne and Dunsley, so that except for the fact that Mr Robinson's servant and the intelligent Pickeronian found that the road did go to Dunsley we have no information as to its exact position. Young, however, describes its course past Stape and Mauley Cross over Wheeldale and Grain Becks to July or Julian Park. In the foundation of a wall round an enclosure at that point he mentions the discovery of an inscribed Roman stone of which a somewhat crude woodcut is given in his "History of Whitby." The inscription appears to be ILVIVILVX, and Young read it as LE. VI. VI. L. VEX, or in full LEGIONIS SEXTÆ VICTRICIS QUINQUAGINTA VEXILLARII, meaning, "Fifty vexillary soldiers of the sixth legion, the Victorious." This rendering of the abbreviations may be inaccurate, and some of the letters before and after those visible when the stone was discovered may have been obliterated, but Dr Young thought that the inscription was probably complete. On Lease Rigg beyond July Park the road cuts through another Roman camp of similar dimensions to the western one at Cawthorne. In the map reproduced here a much clearer idea of the course of the road can be had than by any description. I have marked the position of the road to the south of Cawthorne as passing through Barugh, where Drake discovered it in 1736. "From the camp" (Cawthorne), he writes, "the road disappears towards York, the _agger_ being either sunk or removed by the country people for their buildings. But taking the line, as exactly as I could, for the city, I went down the hill to _Thornton-Risebrow_, and had some information from a clergyman of a kind of a camp at a village called vulgarly BARF; but corruptly, no doubt, from BURGH. Going to this place, I was agreeably surprised to fall upon my long lost road again; and here plainly appeared also a small intrenchment on it; from whence, as I have elsewhere hinted, the _Saxon_ name _Burgh_ might come. The road is discernible enough, in places, to _Newsam-Bridge_ over the river _Rye_; not far from which is a _mile-stone_ of _grit_ yet standing. On the other side of the river the _Stratum_, or part of it, appears very plain, being composed of large blue pebble, some of a tun weight; and directs us to a village called _Aimanderby_. _Barton on the Street_, and _Appleton on the Street_, lye a little on the side of the road." Drake then proceeds to speculate as to the likelihood of the road still making a bee-line for York, or whether it diverged towards Malton, then no doubt a Roman station; but as his ideas are unimportant in comparison with his discoveries, we will leave him to return to the camps at Cawthorne. The hill they occupy forms part of a bold escarpment running east and west between Newton upon Rawcliff and Cropton, having somewhat the appearance of an inland coast-line. On the north side of the camps the hill is precipitous, and there can be little doubt that the position must, in Roman times, have been one of the strongest in the neighbourhood. This is not so apparent to-day as it would be owing to the dense growth of larch and fir planted by Mr James Mitchelson's father about forty years ago. There are, however, peeps among the trees which reveal a view of the great purple undulations of the heathery plateau to the north, and the square camp marked A on the plan is entirely free from trees although completely shut in by the surrounding plantation. In the summer it is an exceedingly difficult matter to follow the ditches and mounds forming the outline of the camps, for besides the closely planted trees the bracken grows waist high. The _vallum_ surrounding each enclosure is still of formidable height, and in camp A is double with a double fosse of considerable depth. Camps C and D are both rectangular, but C, the largest of the four, is stronger and more regular in shape than D, and it may have been that D was the camp of the auxiliaries attached to the legion or part of a legion quartered there. The five outer gates of C and D are protected by overlapping earthworks, the opening being diagonal to the face of the camp, but the opening between these two enclosures is undefended. Camp B may have been for cattle or it may have been another camp of auxiliaries, for unlike the other three it is oval and might even have been a British encampment used by the Romans when they selected this commanding site as their headquarters for the district.

To fix the origin of a camp by its formation is very uncertain work and no reliance can be placed on statements based on such evidence; but Camp A bears the stamp of Roman work unmistakably, and the fact that the Roman road cuts right through its east and west gates seems a sufficiently conclusive proof. It is also an interesting fact that between forty and fifty years ago Mr T. Kendall of Pickering discovered the remains of a chariot in a barrow on the west side of Camp A. Fragments of a wooden pole 11 feet long, and of four spokes, could be traced as well as the complete iron tyres of both wheels, and portions of a hub. These remains, together with small pieces of bronze harness fittings, are now carefully arranged in a glass case in Mr. Mitchelson's museum at Pickering.

There is a mill just to the south of Pickering known as Vivers Mill, and near Cawthorne there is a farm where Roman foundations have been discovered, known as Bibo House. Both these names have a curiously Roman flavour, but as to their origin I can say nothing.

The three or four plans of these camps that have been published are all inaccurate; the first, in Drake's "Eboracum," being the greatest offender. General Roy has shown camps B and C in the wrong positions in regard to A, and even Dr. Young, who himself notices these mistakes, is obliged to point out that the woodcut that is jammed sideways on one of his pages is not quite correct in regard to camp C (marked A on his plan), although otherwise it is fairly accurate.

A small square camp is just visible in a field to the east of Cawthorne; there is an oval one on Levisham Moor, and others square and oval dotted over the moors in different directions, but they are of uncertain origin. There can be little doubt that subsidiary camps and entrenchments would have been established by the Romans in a country where the inhabitants were as fierce and warlike as these Brigantes, but whether the dominant power utilised British fortresses or whether they always built square camps is a matter on which it is impossible to dogmatise.

A number of Roman articles were dug up when the cutting for the railway to Sinnington was being made, and the discoveries at this point are particularly interesting as the site is in an almost direct line between Cawthorne and Barugh.

We are possessed, however, of sufficient evidence to gain a considerable idea of Pickering during the four hundred years of the Roman occupation. We have seen that the invaders constructed a great road on their usual plan, going as straight as the nature of the country allowed from their station at Malton to the sea near or at Whitby; that on this road they built large camps where some hundreds, possibly thousands of troops were permanently stationed, although the icy-cold blasts from the north-east may have induced them to occupy more protected spots in winter. Roman chariots, squads of foot soldiers, and mounted men would have been a common sight on the road, and to the sullen natives the bronze eagle would gradually have become as familiar as their own totem-posts. Gradually we know that the British chiefs and their sons and daughters became demoralised by the sensual pleasures of the new civilisation and thus the invaders secured themselves in their new possessions in a far more efficacious manner than by force of arms.

The Britons remained under the yoke of Rome until A.D. 418, when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that "This year the Romans collected all the hoards of gold that were in Britain; and some they hid in the earth, so that no man afterwards might find them, and some they carried away with them into Gaul," and in A.D. 435 we find the record that "This year the Goths sacked the city of Rome and never since have the Romans reigned in Britain." The Brigantes were thus once more free to work out their own destiny, but the decay of their military prowess which had taken place during the Roman occupation made them an easy prey to the daring Saxon pirates who, even before the Romans finally left England, are believed to have established themselves in scattered bodies on some parts of the coast. The incursions of these warlike peoples belong to the Saxon era described in the next chapter.