Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/423

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they are all south of the road, and this explains how the Lincolnshire name for a high road is "ramper," i.e., rampart. There are other sea banks which were thrown up purposely to keep out the sea, not necessarily as roads. These are very large and important works, fifty miles in length and at a varying distance from the sea, girdling the land with but little intermission from Norfolk to the Humber. Such large undertakings could only have been carried out by the Romans.

This bank, when made, had to be watched; for both in the earliest ages, and also in Jacobean times when the fens were drained, all embanking and draining works were violently opposed by the fen-men who lived by fishing and fowling, and had no desire to see the land brought into cultivation.

The Romans were great colonisers; they made good roads through the country wherever they went to stay, and in Lincolnshire they began the existing system of "Catchwater" drains which has been the means of converting a marshy waste into the finest agricultural land in the kingdom. The Roman Carr (or fen) dyke joined the Witham with the Welland, so making a navigable waterway from Lincoln in the centre to Market Deeping in the extreme south of the county; and by catching the water from the hills to the west it prevented the overflowing streams from flooding the low-lying lands, and discharged them into the sea.

Rennie, at the beginning of last century, used the same method in the east fen; but modern engineers have this advantage over the Romans that they are able by pumping stations to raise the water which lies below the level of the sea to a higher level from which it can run off by natural gravitation. Still the Romans did wonderfully, and when they had to leave England, after 400 years of beneficent occupation, England lost its best friends, for, not only was he a great road and dyke builder but, as the child's "Very First History Book" says,

"If he just chose, there could be no man Nicer and kinder than a Roman."

The Romans themselves were quite aware of the beneficial nature of their rule, as far as their colonies were concerned, and were proud of it. Who can fail to see this feeling if he reads the charming lines on Rome which Claudian wrote, about 400, when the Romans were still in Britain.