Page:VCH Norfolk 1.djvu/327

 ROMANO-BRITISH NORFOLK were mostly the Roman upper classes of the natives. The common assertion that they were Roman officers or officials, may be set aside as rarely, if ever, correct. The peasantry who worked on these estates, or were otherwise occu- pied in the country, lived in rude hamlets, sometimes in pit dwellings, sometimes in huts, with few circumstances of comfort or pleasure. Their civilization, however, as we have said, was predominantly Roman in all such matters as the objects in common use or the warming and decora- tion of the houses. Even among the country folk the Late Celtic art, as an art, appears mainly to have vanished. One feature, not a prominent one, remains to be noticed — trade and industry. We should, perhaps, place first the agricultural industry, which produced wheat and wool. Both were exported in the fourth century, and the export of wheat to the towns of the lower Rhine is mentioned by an ancient writer as considerable. Unfortunately the details of this agriculture are almost unknown : perhaps we shall be able to estimate it better when the Romano-British ' villas ' have been better explored. Rather more traces have survived of the lead mining and iron mining, which, at least during the first two centuries of our era, was carried on with some vigour in half a dozen districts — lead on Mendip, in Shrop- shire, Flintshire and Derbyshire ; iron in the Weald and the Forest of Dean. Other minerals were less important. The gold mentioned by Tacitus proved very scanty, and the far-famed Cornish tin seems (accord- ing to present evidence) to have been worked comparatively little and late in the Roman occupation. The chief commercial town was, from the earliest times, Londinium (London), a place of some size and wealth, and perhaps the residence of the chief authorities who controlled taxes and customs dues. Finally, let us sketch the roads. We may distinguish four groups, all commencing from one centre, London. One road ran south-east to Canterbury and the Kentish ports. A second ran west and south-west to Silchester, and thence by ramifications to Winchester, Dorchester and Exeter, Bath, Gloucester and South Wales. A third, Watling Street, ran north-west across the Midlands to Wroxeter, and thence to the military districts of the north-west : it also gave access to Leicester and the north. A fourth, to which we shall return, ran to Colchester and the eastern counties, and also to Lincoln and York and the military districts of the north-east. To these must be added a long single road, the only important one which had no connection with London. This is the Foss, which cuts obliquely across from north-east to south-west, joining Lincoln, Leicester, Bath, and Exeter. These roads must be understood as being only the main roads, divested, for the sake of clear- ness, of many branches and intricacies, and, understood as such, they may be taken to represent a reasonable supply of internal communications for the province. After the Roman occupation had ceased, they were largely utilized by the English. But they do not much resemble the roads of mediaeval England in their grouping or economic significance, 283