Chapter 3: The Romano-British Period

By 56 BC, the Roman general and political leader Gaius Julius Caesar had almost completed his conquest of Gaul. But Gallic resistance was hard to break and was being strengthened by help from Britain. Druids based in Britain were the main organisers of help for the Gauls. Caesar's chief aim in invading Britain was to destroy the druids. But he knew that further conquests would boost his popularity in Rome. Sailing across the English Channel with a small force in 55BC he led his first military expedition into Britain. He returned to Britain the following year, this time with an invasion army. According to Caesar's own account, he defeated some of the Celts, forced them to give him money, and then returned to Rome.

On both occasions, Caesar landed in Kent. In 54 BC, he advanced inland and captured Wheathampstead, near present-day St. Albans, Hertfordshire. But a rebellion in Gaul forced him to withdraw from Britain.

At the time Caesar landed, Britain, which the Romans called Britannia, consisted of tribal communities ruled by kings or queens. The country's importance as a trading centre was already well known but probably grew after Caesar's expeditions.

The Roman Emperor Claudius ordered the conquest of Britain in AD 43. Vespasian, later to be emperor of Rome, led one of the four invading legions under the overall control of Aulus Plautius. At the Battle of the Medway, the Romans defeated the tribes of southeastern Britain led by Caratacus. Claudius himself marched in triumph into Colchester, where many tribal chiefs submitted to him. The Romans then advanced northwards and westwards from London, building roads and establishing forts. Caratacus fled to the southern part of present-day Wales. There, he headed a tribe called the Silures and resisted the Romans until AD 51, when he was defeated and captured. One of the most famous battle sites is that of Maiden castle in Dorset. The Durotriges tribe occupied Maiden Castle, but in AD 43 or 44, after a bloody siege, the Romans overwhelmed the hill fort. Archaeological investigations of the site have revealed stores of sling-stones and the bones of a defender killed by a Roman ballista bolt.

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The Ramparts of Maiden Castle.............................................................................................Bodies of Maiden Castle's Defenders

By AD 61, the Romans controlled the country as far north and west as the Humber and Severn rivers. In that year, Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman governor who was also a general, defeated a rebellion led by Boudicca, queen of the Iceni of East Anglia. With other British tribes the Iceni had burned London and other towns and defeated a Roman legion. Suetonius Paulinus travelled from Wales with most of his army and defeated the rebelling tribes. Boudicca took poison to avoid capture.

Between AD 71 and 79, the Romans subdued western Britain. Gnaeus Agricola appointed governor in AD 78, advanced northwards to the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. The Romans completed the conquest of England during the AD 80's.

The Romans made England a province of their huge empire. England prospered under the Romans. They built camps and forts throughout the land and constructed roads to connect the camps. Trade flowed along the roads, and towns sprang up around the armed camps. The most famous road, which became known as Watling Street, ran from Richborough, near Dover, to Chester and passed through the settlements that became Canterbury and London the latter of which, then called Londinium, began to develop as a port city.

In the AD 120's, Emperor Hadrian built a wall from the Solway Firth to the River Tyne to defend Roman Britain from raids by the Picts and other tribes of northern Britain. From AD 140 to 142, during the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius, Roman forces built a second defensive wall from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde, but they could not hold it against tribal attacks and eventually abandoned it.

The Romans sent no expeditions to Hibernia (Ireland). Throughout Roman times, the mountainous districts of Cambria (now part of Wales) and the territory between Hadrian's Wall and the River Humber remained turbulent areas, controlled through forts and strategic roads.

Southern Britain, however, was considerably influenced by Roman civilisation. There, the Roman way of life spread from the towns to the countryside. The Romans built most towns to a standardised pattern of straight, parallel main streets that crossed at right angles. The forum (market place) formed the centre of each town. Shops and such public buildings as the basilica (public hall), baths, law-courts, and temple surrounded the forum. The paved streets had drainage systems, and fresh water was piped to many buildings. Some towns had a theatre for animal fights, gladiator shows, and plays. Houses were built of wood or narrow bricks and had tiled roofs. In some houses, hot air from a furnace was conducted through brick pipes under the floor to provide heat. Some houses had colonnaded terraces and mosaic floors. Upper-class Britons in the towns spoke Latin and wore the Roman toga.

Roman Mosiac

Many Romans and wealthy Romanised Britons lived in country villas. Villas were long, single-storey farmhouses surrounded by estates with huts for slaves and peasants. The owner's house usually had about 12 rooms leading off an open veranda. Each villa was built around a courtyard. Many villas had baths. The main rooms had mosaic floors and walls with frescoes.

In the temples, priests offered sacrifices to such Roman gods and goddesses as Jupiter, Mars, and Venus. Priests also encouraged people to worship Roman emperors as gods. Emperor-worship was established in all Roman provinces as a means of gaining loyalty from conquered peoples. Some Romans, particularly soldiers, worshipped eastern gods. The remains of a temple to the Persian god Mithras have been uncovered in London. Among the most remarkable Celtic works of art of Roman Europe is the outstanding sun god's head that welcomed pilgrims to the temple of Sulis Minerva in Bath. Within its garlands of druids' oak leaves and framed by great serpentine locks of hair, the head of the Celtic sun god glowered all-seeing from its Roman temple pediment, transfixing Roman and Briton alike.

Sun God

Roman soldiers and traders brought Christianity, and in the 300's, the Christian Church was established in Britain. A number of silver items bearing Christian symbols and dating from the AD 350's have been found in various places in Britain. In addition, an early Christian chapel has been discovered in a Roman villa in Kent.

The Romans had found Britain full of warring tribes, among them the Dobunni - the people of the Severn valley and the Cotswolds. The territory of the Dobunni can be estimated from the spread of their coins through North Somerset, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and part of Warwickshire. Differences in pottery may be a clue that those south of the Bristol Avon had formed a splinter group. Under Roman administration, tribal areas became civitates. A schism between the northern and southern Dobunni would make the Bristol Avon the natural southern boundary of the Dobunnic civitas.

The city of Worcester was within the nothern Dobunnic civitas, but relatively little is known of its Roman past. It was probably the town of 'Vertis' referred to in a 7th century document. The only Roman structure identified is a circular building thought to be a temple or shrine, while traces of timber-framed buildings have been excavated in Sidbury. Excavations have produced some fourth-century coins and pottery, and unbroken glass vessels. In 2006 investigations adjacent to 'the Butts' revealed evidence of Romano-British domestic and industrial activity; the fomer in the form of domestic objects and the latter in the form of slag from iron-working. Worcester was an important centre of Roman iron-working, with slag deposits occuring throughout the city. There are alos traces of the 'dark earth' that built up on many Roman town sites as domestic and industrial activity gave way to market-gardening type activity following the collapse of the occupation.

The town was established at an important river-crossing point. It has been postulated that iron slag core of the medieval briedge supports demolished in 1781 could have been parts of the Roman bridge. There is evidence that the late Iron Age defensive ditches on the east bank of the Severn may have been dug out during the first century A.D., but there is no other evidence to suggest that this was used as a fort by the Romans. Scatters of military equipment and coins found in the city centre from this early period may have been lost during the course of road building, or won by the local inhabitants in battle, rather than being rubbish from a Roman military garrison. There must have been a wall around the town for the Saxons to have named it Weogornceaster, "Roman walled town of the people called Weogora.". Charter evidence indicates that St Helen's parish church originated as a Roman or Romano-British place of worship.

In Holt and Little Witley Romano-British (40 AD - c.450) remains are few in number although field-walking has produced evidence of Roman occupation near Bank and Thomas's Farms in Little Witley. More recently two brooches have been discovered in the vicinity of Chapel Farm. Perhaps these are evidence of continued occupation from the Iron Age village that has been postulated in the area.

A Roman milestone survived into the eighth century at the boundary between Holt and Little Witley parishes, near to Hurst Farm. It was located on the military road, Herepathe in Anglo-Saxon charters, known as Straete that led from Worcester, through Hallow and Grimley, to an as yet unidentified western fort or outpost. Further evidence of the presence of the Roman military in the area is found in Shrawley, where three circular crop-marks mark the position of a marching camp overlooking Shrawley Brook. In Grimley a small fort adjoining the churchyard has been partially excavated. It had three ditches, the inner two were deep and 'V' shaped, the outer was shallower and may have borne a palisade.

Roman Marching Camp

A small Roman-British ditched enclosure has been excavated at Hawford, not far from Ball Mill. The enclosure has been interpreted as a being an animal compound. It dates from between 120 and 200, and contained pottery sherds of local manufacture. Its location on lighter soils in the Severn Valley is typical of many agricultural sites of a similar period in Worcestershire.

Roman rule in Britain ended when the Roman Empire declined. Massive migrations of less civilised peoples, such as the Goths, Huns, and Vandals, had for years been putting pressure on the frontiers of Rome's provinces. In the 300's, Germanic tribes penetrated into Rome's western provinces. During the same period, across the North Sea came bands of Saxon pirates from Germany, in long black ships. The newcomers were pagans, worshipers of Odin and Thor, and had no use for Roman cities or Roman law. In 368, Pictish tribes severely damaged Hadrian's Wall and destroyed much of northern Roman Britain. A Roman army quickly restored order, but its control soon lapsed.

Roman forces withdrew steadily from Britain to Gaul and Italy. Hadrian's Wall and the forts of Cambria were abandoned by 400. By 407, almost all the Roman soldiers had left Britain. In 410, people in the towns appealed to Rome for protection against the Saxons. In vain a Briton wrote for aid to a Roman consul, saying: "The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians." But the Romans replied that Britain had to see to its own defence. Rome itself was being attacked by Goths.

One protective measure adopted by the desperate Britons in the 300's was the appointment of an official called the Count of the Saxon Shore. This person supervised the defence of the eastern coast of England, which was fortified by a series of forts from the Solent to the Wash. In the 400's, the fortifications were extended.

Pevensey Roman Fort

Despite their efforts, Romanised Britons, were in time easily conquered and displaced or subjugated by the Saxons and related Germanic tribes, the Angles and Jutes. The Anglo-Saxons destroyed what was left of Roman culture wherever they settled. Consequently, the Roman occupation had few lasting effects on Britain, except for good roads in the southern part of the country; a possible basis for some later parish boundaries based on large estates, and the survival of the Christian Church in Wales and Cornwall.