The Hall of Waltheof/Chapter XXXIII

N ancient road or raised bank, which in one place bears the name of Scotland Balk, "runs across" (to quote the words of Gibson's Camden) Danes Bank, otherwise Barber Balk, a little to the north of Templeborough. I take this Scotland Balk, which Gibson describes as "Kemp Bank," to have been the great northern Roman road, which passed through or near Templeborough and went forward to Legiolium (Castleford) and York. These words "Scotland Balk" and "Kemp Bank" would at first suggest that this was a ridgeway or an embankment made by the people who made the neighbouring Barber Balk. And these two "balks," which run so near together, appear on the map to resemble the two nearly parallel embankments or dikes at Bradfield already described. But Scotland Balk does not run parallel to Barber Balk. As the plan shows, the two lines get gradually wider apart as they go respectively towards the north and north-east.

The opinon here advanced that Scotland Balk is the great northern Roman road is founded upon an examination of the work itself, and upon the negative evidence afforded by the fact that if this be not the great northern road which passed through Stretton, Chesterfield, and Beighton, and went forward through or near Templeborough to the north, it is nowhere else to be found. I doubt whether any inference of this kind can be drawn from the name Scotland Balk itself; it is hardly likely that it means Scotland road, or road to Scotland. I have said something about this word on a previous page.

Scotland Balk, otherwise "Kemp Bank," is not so well preserved as Barber Balk; its remains are apparent in fewer places, and it has suffered more from the cultivation of land. It never, like the ridgeway or Barber Balk, takes the form of a rounded embankment with an adjacent ditch. Its summit is never less than twelve or more than fifteen feet wide. In every place where I have examined it its top is flat, and it has a decided appearance of having been a road. I have seen no signs of pavement, but I have had no section cut, or examination made beneath the soil.

At the Kimberworth end, or near Gilberthorpe Hill Top, Scotland Balk appears as a slightly-raised road, twelve or thirteen feet broad, the raised sloping bank being most apparent on the eastern side, and having a perpendicular height of four or five feet on that side, whilst on the western or opposite side the perpendicular height is never more than two feet, and in many places there is no bank at all on this side. Nowhere could I detect any sign of a ditch, and only in one small portion, about 300 yards in length, did I observe that the road was in actual use, this portion being merely a lane leading from a turnpike to a field. Further to the north of Gilberthorpe Hill Top the course of the "balk" is not so apparent, though the raised bank appears here and there, but its site and direction can usually be traced by means of two parallel rows of big trees which grow on either side of it, this feature of the road being especially apparent in and near Wentworth Park. In the park the course of the road has been partly obliterated by artificial sheets of water, but a portion of the raised bank running in a straight direction, with a row of trees on either side, is very well preserved. Here, as before, the bank is highest on the eastern side, and the breadth of the "balk" nearly corresponds with its breadth at Gilberthorpe Hill Top, being about fourteen feet. Here, too, the top of the "balk" is flat, and looks like a disused road, and as though it had been an old coach road leading to the north. I have examined it in many places, and have always found its top flat, and at least twice as wide as the path or way which in some places runs on the top of Barber Balk. This feature of Scotland Balk is so uniform and persistent that I incline to regard it, on this ground alone, as an ancient road. Again, Scotland Balk is not, like Barber Balk, a ridgeway; it does not run upon a ridge, or show any trace of having been intended for a barrier against an enemy, or as a defence against attack from the east or south-east. It is, however, possible that this absence of any sign of military engineering is owing to the nature of the ground over which it runs, and the long period during which the contiguous land has been cultivated. It is interesting to compare the breadth of Scotland Balk with that of some of the great Roman roads in Italy, such as the Via Appia, which were from thirteen to fifteen feet wide between the trenches.

Two great Roman roads then met at Templeborough, or a little to the north of that town. The exact point where they crossed each other has not been exactly made out, but probably it was somewhere in the line of the turnpike road leading from Meadow Hall to Kimberworth. That part of the Long Causey—if I may so describe the road which led from Crookes to Templeborough—has been little explored to the east of the last-named town. It appears to have led to Lincoln, but if that city is the Lindum colonia of the Ravenna geographer, and if Templeborough is Bannovallum, it seems strange that no town is mentioned between those two distant places. It can hardly be doubted that Lindum colonia is Lincoln, but, as Mr. Bradley has lately shown, it is very doubtful whether -coln in that word translates colonia, or whether Lincoln was a colony at all.