Mr. Freeman also has drawn a graphic picture of Anderida, with the two Saxon villages of Pevensey and West Ham outside of its old Roman walls, and no dwellings within them. But it would so obviously be [p425] much easier to build new houses outside the gates of a ruined city, or, perhaps, we should say rather fortified camp, than to clear away the rubbish and build upon the old site, that such an instance is far from conclusive. Nor does the fact that in so many cases the streets of once Roman cities deviate from the old Roman lines prove that the new builders avoided the ancient sites. It proves only that, instead of removing the heaps of rubbish, they chose the open spaces behind them as more convenient for their new buildings, in the process of erecting which the heaps of rubbish were doubtless gradually removed. «Is there evidence of continuity in the rural villages?» But, in truth, cases of fortified cities are not to the point. What we want to find out is whether, in the _rural_ districts, the British villages, with their open fields around them, were generally adopted by the Romans, and whether, having survived the Roman occupation, the Saxons adopted them in their turn. «_e.g._ in the Hitchin district.» It may be worth while to recur to the district from which was taken the typical example of the open fields, testing the point by such local evidence as may there be found. «The Icknild way and other ancient roads.» Among the ancient boundaries of the township of Hitchin, or rather of that part which included the now enclosed hamlet of Walsworth, was mentioned the Icknild way--that old British road which, passing from Wiltshire to Norfolk, here traverses the edge of the Chiltern hills. It sometimes winds lazily about uphill and down, following the line of the chalk downs. In many places it is merely a broad turf drift way. Here and there a long straight stretch of a mile or two suggests a Roman improvement upon [p426] its perhaps once more devious course. Here and there, too, are fragments of similar broad turf lanes leading nowhere, having lost the continuity which no doubt they once possessed. Sometimes crossing it, sometimes branching off from it, sometimes running parallel to it, are also frequently found similar winding broad turf drift ways, or straight roads of apparently British or Roman origin. It crosses Akeman Street at Tring, Watling Street at Dunstable, and Irmine Street at Royston. Neither Dunstable nor Royston, however, are examples of continuity, being comparatively modern towns, neither of them mentioned in the Domesday Survey. Hitchin lies about half-way between the cross-roads. «The district under its Belgic kings.»