[Music] hi currently stood in the middle of a Roman Road one between Salsbury and Winchester
and I can tell you without any archaeological digging whatsoever this Roman Road in particular
was repaired a number of times how exactly do I know that and more importantly I thought
that Roman roads lasted forever welcome to the top five Roman Road [Music] myths
now it's quite possible that if you've had an internet connection and access to social media
over the last couple of decades or so you have seen a thousand memes which look just like this
2,000-year old Roman Road versus a modern Road or they built the roads that lasted
an eternity and then the engineers arrived and there are absolutely hundreds of them
now don't get me wrong I'm not here in support of your local Council or Roads Department but
there are a couple of glaring issues with this seemingly impossible nostalgic view
you see today's cars weigh anything between 1 and 3 tons and Lor's perhaps up to 44 tons at
least here in the UK the forces on today's roads with the speed limits of up to 70 mph and a car
accelerating and decelerating especially around a corner are quite immense and then
compare that to your Roman cart no axles just trundle along at sort of 3 to 5 m an hour the
two simply aren't comparable and then there's a second thing the pictures Within These memes
often don't show actual Roman roads they either show you a picture of the incredibly famous AUM
way in Italy not hugely representative of the entire Roman Road network will be a very famous
one or or a road that is instead a road that appears to be Roman but in fact one that has
been more recently repaired Blackstone Edge is a great example that seems to continually
crop up it's actually repaired and restoned in 1735 it remained in use for 35 years the rumors
became the norm that this was indeed a Roman origin now let's be clear that Roman roads
were fit for purpose they were fit for their network but comparing them to today's roads
and today's Network and the demands of today's traffic and physics was just not comparable
in any way shape or form and let's be clear Roman roads did need repair more on that very
shortly okay so that's the first easy debunk let's up the game a little bit have a look who
what was just around this corner now I stated in a previous video that the ageold myth of a 3 to
6t deep trench cut out with a multiple strata and various names is just not true now this myth came
about sort of for a wrong translation if you will it was uh somebody was describing exactly
how to build a Roman villa and the foundations and they suggested you need to dig 3 to 6 ft
down and build up layers and of course this was translated into how they build roads too which
is simply not the case so if that's not true why exactly have we got a 3 to 6t high ager a bit of
the middle of the Roman Road here in the Hedge I'm about to show you it's quite spectacular let
me explain with a quick hedge [Music] dive so to build your Roman Road you'd simply dig and
scrape off a layer of top soil maybe 6 to 12 in at the very most and then you'd start building
up your layers of Ager on top now this would consist again of whatever local resource was
available but by and large a layer of stones first larger Stones then a slightly finer
layer sunk between that and on top some gravels varying size and coarseness then I was emailed
a picture of the the Foss way near radstock and it was like this it was at least 6t High
there were pictures of people and it had layers upon layers what exactly is going on there with
that and with this it's [Music] huge in fact this image actually is a road that has been
repaired over its 3 or 400 year life again and again many layers that essentially started with
the very bottom one right down here the layers are not contemporary they were not built all at
once it's quite easy to see how that mistake was made even the uh the genius that was Ivan
margory Mr Roman Road well he made that mistake too in thinking that all the layers were done at
the same time and we are left with this huge bit of Roman Road sadly unlikely to be contemporary
all at the same time just repair after repair which almost make it not a vea because the top
part is so [Music] thin come and take a look at what is in the field just to my left right here
now I'm not going to insult your intelligence by suggesting that Roman roads weren't straight
of course they are and were perhaps a change in uh course from Beacon to Beacon depending
on the terrain there there's nothing new or controversial with that but just whilst
we're here as a midpoint in this video we have a look at this right here is one of the biggest
deviations in the Roman Road Network in the UK now ahead of me that way to the South Southeast is a
road that heads all the way down to Winchester but right here it takes a deviation of almost
90° now I've made about three videos from this exact spot about this the deviation but I did
want to try and show you while we knew this Roman Road does deviate what evidence is there and it's
this right come see this right there now with the Advent of liar the sort of the
modern satellite imagery which strips away all the vegetation it's become a
lot easier to find a Roman Road but not just the road itself other features to
two and here is one of them just need to climb over this fence into this
field right and here we are absolutely Monumental Quarry now this is a quarry would almost certainly
have been used to build the base for the Roman Road on a lot of this stretch here around this
section to Causeway can just about steeping inside it and it's huge absolutely huge now
this isn't exactly controversial or a big myth busting exercise but I did think it was quite
important to give you a bit of context in terms of if you find something like this
the quaries along long especially in sort of more Uplands more pasted areas which haven't just been
plowed to death well if you find something like this you could well be onto finding your Roman
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Road now when we talk about ditches on Roman roads well we're referring to the trenches either side
for drainage at least we assume that come and take a look at this and I'll show you exactly
what I mean again we're on the SSB Winchester Roman Road Route and just in here it's a good
example of exactly what I mean about ditches right so here we are stood on top of this Roman Road in
the middle and I'll try and do a good diagram for you of what I'm looking at now either side
and what I'm stooding now is a ditch now the ditches could be 5 to 7 m apart as in just the
other side of the main Ager the middle bit of the Roman Road or they could be as far apart as 25 M
now that's especially true in more lowland areas now the gap between the Agger and the ditch was
called the shoulder so the shoulder could be nothing to maybe another 7 or 8 m and Beyond
and that was often filled with many different things it could be just left to Grass it could
be filled with clay or it could actually be another metal surface many different examples
of that now I always thought the ditches were for drainage but 25 M apart in the doesn't sound like
it however then we have this man Alan who wrote books of rules and institutions treaties on the
functions of different magistrates and he wrote that the land of the public road should be marked
out with fixed limits of width by whomever had the right of making it public now many excavations
including some on Street highlighted that the area between the Ager and the ditch was often
filled with a softer clay this could indicate a use of separate traffic especially as some
of these were found to have horse hoofprints now there is a false notion as well of inner and outer
ditches well in nearly all the cases certainly here in the UK it turns out that they are from
different eras [Music] so if you don't dig down 3 to 6 feet if you don't have a relatively good
paved surface like the AUM way in the majority of cases how exactly do you build a Roman Road
well it turns out it is all about the layers just not the big deep in the ground ones that we're led
to believe paledio in 1570 wrote that there were two different designs to a Roman Road these were
specific to Italy but seemed to transcend well to other countries including here in the UK number
one a paved surface such as the appian way and Roads found within cities and towns number two
and secondly the most common throughout the entire Roman Road Network a mound of gravel
forming an Agger in the middle paledio also questioned the shoulder and its potential use
so that area that shoulder was sometimes left to Clay archaeological evidence has led us to
believe that there have been hoof prints found in them as well so it's certainly worth considering
that and when we talk about gravel Mound or padio gravel Mound well that's what
we're talking about when we talk about the vast majority of the Roman Road network of
course there's one last thing to consider which is that of the really large large
Boulders at the bottom of the Ager the mound well certainly here in the UK study by the
Roman Road research Association suggested that only 26% had very large or larger Boulders at
the bottom again the vast majority would just built up with whatever you had locally to hand
if you didn't have big rocks and boulders well then you just couldn't use [Music] it
I've been Paul I hope you've enjoyed today's little Adventure if you like
what you see and you want a bit more behind the scenes we do weekly videos
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[Music]
week