A third example may be drawn from our own country. Lincoln, the Roman
Lindum, was established as a 'colonia' about A.D. 75, and the lines of
its original area, its 'Altstadt'--for it was perhaps enlarged in
Roman times,--can still be traced 'Above Hill' round the Castle and
Cathedral (fig. 26). It formed a rectangle just over 41 acres in
extent (400 x 500 yds.). Four gates, one of which still keeps its
Roman arch, gave access to the two main streets which divided the town
into four symmetrical quarters and crossed at right angles in the
centre. Along one of these streets, which agrees, if only roughly,
with the modern Bailgate, ran a stately colonnade (fig. 27), though
whether this belonged to some special building or adorned the whole
extent of street is not quite certain. Beneath the same street ran, as
at Timgad and Laibach and elsewhere, the town sewer (fig. 28). Of the
other main street and of side streets nothing is known, but we can
hardly doubt that they carried out the chess-board pattern.[101]
[101] _Archaeologia_, liii. 236 and lvi. 371. The plan given by
Mr. Fox in liii. 236 represents his own theory, which may be open
to doubt.
Probably the other four municipalities in Britain were planned
similarly, though the evidence is too slender to prove it. At
Verulamium (for example) near St. Albans, a local archaeologist long
ago claimed to detect a scheme of symmetrical house-blocks, resembling
squares very slightly askew. Subsequent inquiry has shown that this
scheme was merely or mostly imagination.[102]
[102] J.W. Grover, _Brit. Archaeol. Assoc. Journal_, xxvi.
(1870), p. 45, plate 1. The theories of the late Mr. Bellows
about the streets of Roman and modern Gloucester were equally
astray, though in other ways.
[Illustration: FIG. 28. LINCOLN. SEWER UNDER BAILGATE]
CHAPTER IX
ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWN-PLANS. II
In the preceding chapters Roman town-planning has been treated in
connexion with towns of definite municipal rank, which bore the titles
'colonia' or 'municipium'. The system is, of course, closely akin to
such foundation or refoundation as the establishment of a 'colonia'
implied in the early Empire, while the no less Roman character of the
'municipium' made town-planning appropriate to this class of town
also.
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