London Before the ConquestLethaby, W. R. (William Richard)
History
London Before the Conquest
Lethaby, W. R. (William Richard)
London (England) -- History -- To 1500
The stream of Tyburn crossed Oxford Street just west of Stratford Place,
and ran through the Green Park, and so to the west of Westminster. Cufford
I find again, _temp._ Edward I., as in, or near, the _Campis de Eya_--now
Hyde Park and St. James's.[61] This Cowford was probably where Piccadilly
"dip" crosses the Tyburn valley. A bridge is shown here in Faithorne's
map. The Here Street or military road is of course Oxford Street and
Holborn, and London-Fen is the Fleet valley.[62]
The manor of Tyburn appears in Domesday. There can be no doubt as to the
identification of the Here Street, for a document of 1222 gives as the
boundaries of St. Margaret's, Westminster, the water of Tyburn running to
the Thames and the _Strata Regia_ extending to London past the garden of
St. Giles [in-the-Fields], and Roman remains have been found in Holborn.
The Here Street has been traced between Silchester and Staines through
Egham, and on this side of Staines, not far from Ashford, it has been
found.[63] An under road to Kensington, etc., by Knightsbridge must also
have been ancient. Knightsbridge is named in a twelfth-century charter,
and it seems to be the same as the Kingsbridge in a charter of the
Confessor.[64]
From the fact that the Antonine Itinerary gives two routes to
Lincoln,--one round to the west by the Watling Street, and one to the east
by Colchester,--it seems probable that the direct Erming Street was made
in the later Roman era.
The best critical account of the four Roman ways is in _Origines Celticæ_
and the _Archæological Journal_ for 1857, in which Dr. Guest, working from
charters, verifies their position. He considers that the portion of the
Erming Street between London and Huntingdon was not a Roman paved road,
although "it must have existed in the days of Edgar, and perhaps as early
as the times of Offa." "Tracks of an ancient causey may still be found
alongside the turnpike road which leads from London to Royston," beyond
which the road passes straight on over the fens to a place called
Ermingford in Domesday and Earmingaford in a charter of Edgar. To the
south of London he lays down a "Stone Street" from Chichester through
Bignor (Roman villa) and Dorking. In vol. ix. of _Archæologia_, Bray, the
co-author of the _History of Surrey_, traces this "Roman road through
Sussex and Surrey to London." "That there was a great road from Arundel
which ran north and north-east to London is very certain, considerable
remains of it being now (1788) visible in many places." Another road from
the south seems to have passed through Croydon and Streatham, which in a
charter of the Confessor is called Stratham.[65] Near Ockley the former
was called "Stone Street Causeway," and Camden speaks of it as "the old
military road of the Romans called Stone Street." It was "some 30 feet
broad and some 4 or 5 feet thick of stones." Considerable vestiges of this
Roman road may even now be traced on the Ordnance Survey; approaching
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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