Page:VCH Rutland 1.djvu/131

 ROMANO-BRITISH RUTLAND the course of a mile or so touches the county boundary in the parish of Great Casterton. Its general course from Royston as far as the middle of Rutland is north-north-west (in order to avoid the fen country), but near Stretton it turns due north, and so continues in a straight line through Ancaster and Lincoln to the Humber, a stretch of 48 miles. ^ Up to the point where it reaches the boundary of our county there is little or no trace of this road from near Wittering in Northants, but at this point it unites with the modern Great North Road, with which it coincides as far as North Witham in Lincolnshire. Codrington * describes its course as follows : — The modern North Road descends the hill towards Casterton in a cutting, and after it rejoins the line of Erming Street, a county boundary follows it for more than half-a-mile. At Casterton,* where there are some remains of a camp, the straight line which has been followed from Burleigh Park is swerved from to avoid the river, and is not altogether resumed until Tickencote Hall is passed. Then the road is straight for three miles, raised four, five, and six feet high with a width of eight yards, and with a parish boundary along it, after which there is a turn of about 30° towards the north, by which the road is kept upon the high ground. The parishes on either side are Tickencote and Casterton, followed by Em- pingham and Pickworth ; between Tickencote and Greetham the road is known as Horn Lane.* The road continues along the line of the modern road ' for three miles through Stretton ° as a wide raised road with a parish boundary [Greetham] along it for half a mile, and then leaves the line, which is shown by a hedgerow on the east of the road with a parish boundary and a county boundary along it for a mile.' It leaves the county for Lincolnshire finally at South Witham. A good section of the road was exposed in 1900 in a stone quarry near Great Casterton, several layers of different materials being clearly discernible ; ^ the point where this occurs is just where the road aligns with the county boundary, and the section is still visible. There seems to be only one other possible Roman road in Rutland, which branches off from Ermine Street about a mile and a half south of Stretton and runs in a north-westerly direction past Greetham and Thistleton, where it passes the site of a Roman settlement,* and crossing the boundary shortly afterwards, coincides with the boundaries of Leicestershire and Lincolnshire as far as Harston, where its traces are lost. This road was traversed by the Nottinghamshire antiquary, Dickinson, about a hundred years ago, and proved to his satisfaction to lead to Newark and so on to Southwell, or perhaps to Brough and Littleborough.' Other antiquaries, such as Gale and Bishop Bennet of Cloyne, saw in this road one leading to Nottingham, or else to the supposed crossing of the Trent at Ad Pontem (Thorpe or Farndon in Notting- hamshire).^" That such a road existed in Roman times is quite possible, and the chief fact in its favour, at least so far as concerns the portion in Rutland, ' Codrington, Rom. Roads in Britain, 129. ' Op. cit. 145. ' Ibid, i, 232 ; see also Codrington, op. cit. 144. ° See Index, s.v. Market Overton. ' Dickinson, Antiq. of Notts, ii, 10 ; see also his map at end of pt. i, and ' Expl. Obs.' 8. '" Gale, Anton. Iter. Rom. 95 (he places Causennae at Nottingham) ; Arch. Jourii. xliii, 42. Bishop Trollope says, ' There are no traces of such a road now ' (Assoc. Arch. Soc. RfJ>. ix, 161). 87
 * See Index, s.v. * .^isoc. Arch. Soc. ReJ>. ix, 1 60.
 * See Rut. Mag. and Hist. Rec. i, 264.