Talk:Roman roads in Britannia

Note on names of Roman roads: Unlike their counterparts in Italy and some other Roman provinces, we do not know the original names of Roman roads in Britain, due to lack of literary and inscription evidence.

--Scuzate, perro Italia is not "some other Roman province", Italia WAS Roma !! 82.35.23.167 11:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)Flavio di Buongustaio

Cade's Road?
Disclaimer: I am no archaeologist whatsoever.

But Wikipedia, from a variety of pages, is trying to inform me of a Roman road at Durham of which I have never heard, namely Cade's Road. Looking a little deeper, the other references within Wikipedia seem to be mutually self-referential. There are no apparent citations to significant non-Wikipedia sources. The References section seems to be mostly just newspaper articles, not peer-reviewed archaeology citations. This looks perilously close to what Wikipedia calls (and forbids) "Original Research" (OR).

I'm aware of a few bits of speculative Roman evidence around Durham, such as the 2005(?) discovery of possible post-holes(?) for a possible Roman crossing of the River Wear at Shincliffe. But is there any other actual evidence of a genuine Roman Road in this area?

It's not the article on this speculative Cade's Road that concerns me, but rather the spread of this apparent speculation onto other pages.

My sincere apologies if there really is a generally accepted Cade's Road in the south-east Durham area.

Could someone with Roman-archaeological knowledge of N.E. England check? If there really is such a generally accepted road, then could that article be adjusted to mention these reliable external sources, please? Thanks.

Perhaps also someone could check the table of road names in this Roman roads in Britain article (which seems to be the springboard for the Cade's Road material) in case there are other things that might need attention. Thanks.

Feline Hymnic (talk) 21:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Military Way
I am assuming this is referring to the Military Road which I believe (someone can correct me as I am no expert) was the work of General Wade to provide easy access between Newcastle and Carlisle in case of future Scottish Jacobite incursions into England. A good part of Hadrian's Wall was used to build the road. The fact that Wade had to build the road in the first place in order to move troops between Newcastle and Carlisle suggests that there was no Roman road of any consequence that ran the length of the wall... why should there be when the Roman troops would've moved along the top of the wall and supplied from the various larger forts that are positioned along its length. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.174.194.98 (talk) 18:21, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Unresolved question?
I also am no expert, but I remember once hearing about a conundrum regarding Roman Roads. They are predominantly straight from town to town - sometimes the towns are many miles apart. The question is, how did they know the precise direction the road needed to run, when they were starting out? Of course there are ways and means of working it out, but at the time, is there any definite answer to how they established this? It should be included under "construction" in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.96.164.105 (talk) 12:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The mechanics of it was covered quite well in the TV programme What the Romans Did for Us. The other aspect is that you need to know which came first - the road or the towns at either end? The thinking seems to be that first, they conquer; then they choose where to fortify; then they establish roads between the forts and only after that do settlements begin to attach themselves to the forts and waystations. Iron-age settlements tend to be small and scattered - it takes a certain amount of land to support a community of a given size, so they had to spread themselves out. Arguably, to grow to town size they needed sufficient food surplus to enable people to switch from farming to mining, manufacturing and trading with more than just their immediate neighbour communities. The roads made trade possible, in bulk and over long distances; food imported in, goods exported out, wealth from it all, if they're lucky. The army could happily march about on fields, it's the repeated use of a route by heavy carts which really demands pavement. If the army happens to march that bit faster on it, then that's certainly a bonus but, perhaps, not the fundamental purpose. As I see it, they weren't a military empire (for the sake of empire) who did some trading on the side, they were a trade empire who had an army to protect their interests. EatYerGreens (talk) 00:02, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I have shown on my web page a method that could be easily used to plan a road in a straight line and it doesn't need lots of soldiers lining up from Exeter to Lincoln just a small surveying party. www.akk.me.uk/roman_road.htm 82.32.240.28 (talk) 10:05, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Hugh Davies in his book Roads in Roman Britain goes into detail about possible surveying and planning methods, particularly with respect to Stane Street, but at the end of the day we just have no information on what the Romans actually did. Your website is not I am afraid suitable for use on Wikipedia as it is unpublished original research.--Charles (talk) 20:39, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Blackstone Edge
I removed Blackstone Edge from Archaeological evidence because according to road engineer Hugh Davies in his book Roads in Roman Britain it is atypical of Roman engineering and is more likely a turnpike with a facility for winching wagons up and down the slope. The Roman route is now thought to zig-zag up the hill on a different line.--Charles (talk) 19:17, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Table entries
Could someone please clarify why some town names in the table appear in all capital-letters while others do not? If all-CAPS was intended to denote which were Roman settlements then I would like Holme Next the Sea to have a citation which says as such (or else change it to mixed-case), since the fort at Brancaster would have been the more obvious destination and users might be more inclined to query that assertion. EatYerGreens (talk) 02:26, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Peddars Way
I have removed the mention of Bury St Edmunds as the destination, since it was unreferenced and the B.St.E. article has the wording "supposed by some to have been the Villa Faustina of the Romans". Supposed isn't good enough, for me. It's an Anglo-Saxon town until proven otherwise. For what it's worth (not a supporting argument for the edit), the overall alignment of the road seems to be from Holme towards Ipswich and would have to make a turn from SSE to SW to get from Knettishall Heath to B.St.E. - why not take the direct route to start with? EatYerGreens (talk) 02:50, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Iter Britanniarum
Just a suggestion ... the Iter Britanniarum in the Antonine Itineraries article might be combined with the information in this article, in some fashion, if anyone has the time and is so inclined. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 16:37, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Road picture
You caption the picture with "Section of Roman road in the Eifel region, SW Germany". This is not true! The picture desciption in commons says "neuzeitlich überbaute Römerstraße" which translates to "modern built-over roman road". Eifel is not SW anyway... In the article where it was originally used (de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlebnisraum_Römerstraße_Köln–Trier) its caption is simply "Typisch gradliniger Streckenverlauf" (typically straight route). Thus, this is simply a picture of a modern field road (on the former site of a Roman road - ? not stated!) somewhere in the Eifel region (no geo data given!) in an article describing a tourist project about a road. Nothing historic is shown in the picture. I think this picture and its caption are most inappropriate. 47.71.10.163 (talk) 09:16, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed. File:Roemerstrasse.jpg removed. --Wire723 (talk) 14:55, 11 June 2019 (UTC)