A View of Roman History

[otherclive]

When I was at senior school in Leicester I was a member of the Local History Society, and joined trips out to visit local historical sites. I had a fascination with Roman history within Leicester and the county, and some trips involved exploring lengths of the old Roman road The Fosse Way. Strangely enough when we moved to Wiltshire I became reacquainted with that route because as I sometimes flew in to RAF Lyneham I could see a straight line of hedgerows to the north and south. I also took the off roader out on to the accessible sections too. After 2000 years I find it incredible that the line of The Fosse Way is still so recognisable. The photo below shows part of its line as the straight line in the middle of the photo. It is from Google Earth and still can be discerned along sizeable parts of its route from Exeter to Lincoln. (Anorak or what?)

 

[Ukdave2002]

I grew up in the Roman fortress town of Deva, now called Chester, so Roman stuff including the walls round the city, the Amphitheatre were just normal things! The roman road between Londinium ( London) and Deva is broadly where the current A5 runs.

At the time my dad worked for BT and was responsible for External Planning in Chester & North Wales, he was an amateur archaeologist and loved all things roman, many times BT would have to excavate in or around Chester and would discover some form of Roman artifact, which would delay things for BT whilst it was investigated and documented, dad had to do the BT official thing , trying to get the works speeded up, whilst unofficially he loved "the dig" so never pushed too hard!