Country Images Magazine North January 2018 | Page 45

Travelling through history
Where Our
Forebears Trod
A look at some of our most ancient thoroughfares
by Maxwell Craven
O
ne lesson archaeology has given
us is that people have always
moved around much more than
we realise. Tales of ancient sages in deep
rural England who had hardly ever been to
the local market town and never to London
were commonplace when I was young,
but the astonishingly wide distribution of
certain diagnostic types of artefact confi rm
that such static lives were by no means
universal.
Th e proof also lies in the antiquity of our road network, for whilst
some roads have long fallen into desuetude and become green lanes,
hedgerows or crop marks, many ancient trackways are still in use.
When I fi rst worked at Derby Museum I was always struck by the lack
of a Roman road going due south from Derby’s Roman predecessor,
Derventio (now Little Chester). Th ere was Ryknield Street going from,
NE to SW via Little Chester, Long Lane running due west, and a road
running SE across Derby’s former racecourse towards Sawley and across
the Trent to join the Fosse Way at Vernemetum (Willoughby-on-the-
Wolds, Leicestershire).
But what if you wanted to go to London? It seemed to me absurd to go
either via Letocetum (Lichfi eld) or Willoughby-on-the-Wolds. Looking
through the fi nds records at the Museum (then held on index cards)
during research we were doing jointly with the (now long defunct)
County Museum Service on Swarkestone Bridge, it became apparent
that this so-called Medieval causeway and 18th century bridge went back
a lot further. Numerous fi nds of dropped low-value Roman coins had
been noted along its course, for instance, along with Iron Age artefacts
northwards along the road to Derby. Clearly the crossing at Swarkestrone
had a much longer pedigree.
Swarkstone Bridge
CountryImagesMagazine.co.uk | 45