Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/276

 A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE Bertram of Copenhagen. Alauna is Bertram's guess for Alcester, and Ad Antonam a name which he invented from a misreading of Tacitus. It occurs nowhere else, and we may dismiss it from further consideration. 4. The Roads In a district such as we have hitherto described, where towns were very few and small and country houses very rare, we should expect roads also to be infrequent, and as a fact we can trace few Roman roads within the bounds of Worcestershire. Even the evidence for deter- mining Roman roads is scantier in Worcestershire than elsewhere. We possess of course the usual archaeological evidence. We can point occasionally to ancient metalling along a hne where we might look reasonably for a Roman road, but the Worcestershire instances of such metalling are few and unsatisfactory. We can point also to still-existing tracks running with persistent straightness from one Roman site to another, and in this point we are a little better provided. But our written evidence is very scanty. A few charters and place names ^ and boundaries help us, but we can make no use of what is in other counties our chief aid, the Itinerarium Afitonim, since no route described in that document passes through any part of Worcestershire. The Roman roads of our county fall into two sections. There are in the first place two local roads (as they seem to be) which serve Worcester and Droitwich and one or two other sites, along with which we must notice some conjectured but uncertain roads. And in the second place there are in the extreme east of the county some traceable portions of two more important roads, the so-called Rycknield Street and the Fossway. These do not really belong to the area of the county : they graze it as it were accidentally, but it may be none the less con- venient to speak of them. (i) Worcester, Droitwich, Birmingham. A road running almost invariably straight for over twenty miles can be traced along the existing roads from Worcester to Selly Oak outside Birmingham. The road leaves Worcester by Rainbow Hill, and for a little while is represented only by a part of the boundary between North Claines and Hindlip parishes. From Martin Hussingtree onwards there is still a direct high- way through Droitwich and Bromsgrove, swerving slightly to ascend the Lickey, and thence running direct to Selly Oak and coming into the line of Rycknield Street. The straightness of this road and its connec- tion with Roman sites at the two ends and at Droitwich, mark it out as in all probability a Roman road. It was recognized as such by Bishop Lyttelton and is often called the Upper Saltway, though there does not seem to be ancient authority for this term as applied to this road.* Possibly it was known as an old road in the fourteenth century (p. 215). (2) Droitwich, Alcester, Stratford-on-Avon. Here again we depend ' Street ' also, except in early pre-conquest documents, has often no special significance. 212
 * It is necessary to add a caution that ' Port Way ' does not denote a Roman road. The terra
 * Nash, ii. p. cvii. ; Ordnance Maps, xxii., xv., xvi., x. At Northfield there is a Street Farm.