Watling Street

“ Beyond Weeford, the next landmark, the Watling Street goes straight for three and a half miles, and then brings up against another dead end, where it is crossed by the Lichfield and Birmingham road. A hedge and a ploughed field forbid further progress, and it is only when armed with large-scale maps, and by comparing antiquarian authorities, that the course of the Watling Street can be traced, straight on to Wall. ”

“ Right through the vale, from north to south, runs the ancient green lane still known as Watling Street, rubbing shoulders as it goes with the old winding coach-road, and with that modern parvenu the railway track. For this Stretton valley has time out of mind been the great main artery of travel for man and beast, whether faring towards the cities of the north, or journeying into South Wales. ”

“ Henry of Huntingdon tells us that the Watling Street ran from the south-east to the north-west, and that Erming Street ran from north to south. Higden, in the fourteenth century, says that the Watling Street began at Dover and passed through Kent and “over the Thames at London, west of Westminster,” then to St. Albans, Dunstable, Stratford, etc. [53] Camden says: “The Roman road commonly called Watling Street leads straight to London over Hampstead Heath, whence is a [Pg 55] fine prospect of a beautiful city and cultivated country.” ”

“ Presently entering Staffordshire, we came into the Watling-street, laid very broad and deep with gravel not yet worn out, where it goes over commons and moors. It is raised a good height above the soil, and so strait, that upon an eminence you may see it ten or twenty miles before you, and as much behind, over many hill-tops answering one the other as a visto of trees. Here and there, between one Roman town and another, you meet with the remains of an old fort or guard-place. ”

“ The other references to Watling Street are those of “tenements” only.
The yearly procession of the City rectors with the mayor and aldermen started from St. Peter’s, Cornhill, marched along Chepe as far as St. Paul’s Churchyard, turning to the south and so to “Watling Street Close,” which was the eastern entrance to the churchyard.
After the Fire, while the rubbish was being cleared away, on the east of the street were discovered nine wells in a row. They were supposed to have belonged to a street of houses from Watling Street to Cheapside. But one hardly expects to find a well in every house. ”

“ That evening, an hour after sunset, he lay hidden behind a hedge on the west side of Watling Street, exactly opposite the boreen leading to the Queen’s Farm.
Richard slept. He was decidedly short of sleep, and sleep overtook him unawares. Suddenly from the end of the boreen came the faint spit, spit of a motor-car, growing louder as it approached the main road. Would it awake Richard? No, he slept stolidly on. The motor-car, bearing an old man and a young girl, slid down into the valley towards Dunstable, and so out of hearing. An hour passed. ”

“ Watling Street runs through a deep chalk-cutting immediately to the north of Dunstable, and then along an embankment. This region at the foot of the Chiltern Hills is famous for its chalk, which is got from immense broad pits to the west of the high-road. As Richard’s car ran through the cutting—it was electrical, odourless, and almost noiseless—he perceived in front of him the elephant herd standing in the road. A little further on he descried the elephant-keeper, who was engaged in converse with a girl. ”

“ The men took their arms—they carried little treasure with them, because treasure would be of no use to them on their way—their wives and children, ladies as delicate and as helpless as any of our own time—children as unfit as our own to face the miseries of cold and hunger and nakedness—and they went out by the gate of Watling Street, not altogether, not the whole population, but in small companies, for greater safety. ”

“ Later still, in the Elizabethan period and after it, the name Watling Street seems to have been applied by antiquaries to many Roman or reputed Roman roads in various parts of Britain, and English map-makers and inferior writers on Roman roads still perpetuate the fictions. ”

“ The cavalcade was a hindrance to Richard, for he particularly desired to have Watling Street between Dunstable and Hockliffe to himself that night. He waited, therefore, until the whole of Bosco had vanished ahead out of sight. The elephants, four in number, brought up the rear of the procession, and they were under control of the young man whose trick with the strawberry-roan mare had put Richard to the blush. There was no sign of the mare nor of Juana. ”

“ The original meaning of “Watling Street” is never [Pg 96] likely to be determined to the satisfaction of all antiquaries, and its age is equally a contested point. But that a street or a trackway of some kind, of an identical route with the present highway, ran between London and Dover long before Cæsar landed can scarce be matter for doubt. ”

“ At Weedon the old Watling Street bids good-bye to the Holyhead Road for 711⁄2 miles, and goes by itself in a route 751⁄4 miles long, rejoining the modern road at Ketley, near Wellington.
The meaning of the name “Watling Street” is sought under many difficulties, so many and so hazy are the derivations of it advanced. The Britons, it is said, knew the rough track crossing the island before the Romans came as the Sarn Gwyddelin, or Foreigners’ Road, along whose uncertain course came and went the Phœnician merchants who traded with Britain long before Cæsar had heard of this lonely isle ”

“ Leaving the heath by the Dover Road, which still follows the old Watling Street, the way is bordered by apparently endless rows of villas, and the outskirts of Kidbrook and Charlton village are passed before one comes to where the fields, bordered by hedgerows, first come in sight, and even these are disfigured by great boards, offering land to be let for building-plots. ”

“ Watling Street is probably the most ancient road in the Kingdom. It is supposed to have existed prior to the first Roman invasion, but it was the Roman conquest that caused it to be improved and extended. Originally, it stretched from near Dover to Wroxeter and probably north to Chester or Carlisle. Cyclists riding from Dover to London follow the line of the old highway by what is known to-day as the Dover Road; the Street went right through the heart of London, issuing at Edgware. ”

“ There are three great Roman roads traversing Hertfordshire—Watling Street, the Icknield Way, and Ermine Street. Watling Street starts from Dover, and after passing through London, enters the county to the south of Elstree, whence it is continued through Colney Street, Park Street and St Stephens to St Albans, and thence on through Redbourn and Markyate Street, and so to Dunstable whence it eventually reached Chester and Holyhead. Although frequently miscalled the North Road, the modern representative of Watling Street is known as the Chester and Holyhead road. ”

“ Built as the city was on the old Watling Street which led from London to the north, it is not to be wondered at that, even in the desolation of their present ruined state, they bear on their fronts abundant testimony that they were erected at a date as early as the commencement of the Christian era, though any inquiry as to their locality addressed to the country people, is generally met by a vacant stare of wonder and ignorance, which shows that our English rural population is far less poetical than practical. ”

“ Below the hill, and on the line of the Icknield Street, is the hamlet or farm called Chesterfield—a significant name, telling of Roman relics.
THE WATLING STREET, NEAR HAMMERWICH.
Muckley Corner, beyond Wall, is the meeting-place of roads from Walsall to Lichfield and Wolverhampton. The Watling Street still goes unflinchingly ahead, and reaches the outskirts of Hammerwich, uphill. At that nail-making and coal-mining place, it becomes somewhat confused, but is well-known locally to every man, woman, and child as the “Watling Street Road.” ”

“ For the Dover Road is actually the initial limb of the Watling Street: that prehistoric British trackway adopted by the Romans and by them engineered into a road; and it would seem that those Roman engineers, instructed by the Imperial authorities, considered rather the military and strategic needs of those times than those of Londinium; for London was not on the direct road they made; and it was only at a later date, when it was grown commercially, they constructed an alternative route that served it. ”

“ Other streets of less importance are Candlewick Street, East Chepe, Tower Street, Walbrook, Lombard Street, Fenchurch Street, Watling Street, Knightrider Street, besides a great number of narrow lanes, themselves intersected by courts and alleys. Remark, however, that as yet every house of any importance has its garden. The citizen of London clings to his garden, however small it is.
One thinks that, with streets and lanes so narrow, where there is no system of sewage, and everything is thrown into the street, the filth and general uncleanness must have been intolerable. ”

“ The highway from the bridge going southwards really ran straight through the borough (Burh or South-work) , and deflected on to Kent Street at St. George’s Church, which stood here early in the twelfth century (see Southwark, below, p. 110) .
The English invaders came up the Watling Street and were unsuccessfully met at Crayford. At Ockley on the Stone Street there was a great battle with the Danes. William the Conqueror, after the battle of Hastings, took Dover and Canterbury and came to London by the Watling Street ”

“ Soon the young man went to another corner of the tent, and the two girls began to talk more rapidly and more earnestly. Lastly, they shook hands and kissed, Juana burst into tears, and her companion ran out of the tent. Richard followed her at a safe distance through the maze of minor tents, vans, poles, and loose horses, to the main road. A small, exquisitely-finished motor-car stood by the footpath; the girl jumped on board, pulled a lever, and was off in a northerly direction through Dunstable up Watling Street. ”

“ The width was generally about fifteen feet, and at regular intervals were posting stations. The distance was regularly marked off by milestones (mille passuum—a thousand paces) . The principal roads were four in number, viz., Watling Street, the Fosse Way, Icknield Street, and Ermine Street.
Originally, Watling Street probably ran from London to Wroxeter. Its northward and westward continuations proceeded from Wroxeter into Wales; its southern continuations between London, Canterbury and the parts about Dover seem also to have received the same name. ”

“ Lombard-street conducted to Cunobeline’s custom-house, Billingsgate: Threadneedle-street and Broad-street went obliquely toward the north-east, and the present Bishops-gate, and so in later times to the great Roman road called Hermen-street, crossing the Thames where London bridge now is; making a meridian line through the length of the island.
By collating several old plans of London, I discern there were four principal streets running from west to east. 1. The Watling-street, from Ludgate. 2. Thames-street, the boundary toward the river: this on the right hand of Watling-street. 3. ”

“ We know only that he started from the neighbourhood of Canterbury, and that he crossed the Thames at or not far from Brentford.1386 It is, however, morally certain that he marched either by the trackway on the line of which the Romans of a later period made the great road called Watling Street, which crosses the Medway between Rochester and Strood, or along the southern slope of the chalk escarpment, and across the Medway at Aylesford or Halling. ”

“ However this provincialism of rural architecture is to be explained, it is a social and artistic fact worthy of being observed and permanently recorded.
Turning now to the Midland Counties, I will again illustrate the subject by a couple of instances. Mr. Rimmer most accurately notes that the ancient Roman way of Watling Street passes along the north-eastern frontier of Warwickshire: but beyond{x} this he does not make much use of a county which is by no means poor in historical associations. ”

“ The statues of famous British generals around this open space are quite in keeping with the design.
Water Poet. The literary sobriquet of John Taylor, who was a Thames waterman.
Watling Street. A corruption of Vitellina Strata, “the road of Vitellius,” so called because this great Roman highway from Dover to Cardigan in Wales was projected by the Emperor Vitellius, and those portions of it in London and elsewhere were constructed during his reign.
Watteau. See “Á la Watteau.”
Way Down. An Americanism for “down the way to” e.g.--“Way down the lone churchyard.” ”

“ From Redbourne to London, with a clear road and a 40 h.-p. Panhard beneath you, is not a far cry. In a shade under the hour the motor-car was running down Edgware Road to the Marble Arch. Richard kept straight on to Adelphi Terrace, put up the car at a stable-yard close by without leave, and, having aroused his landlady, gave Teresa into her charge until breakfast-time. It was just turned four o’clock, and a beautiful morning. ”

“ However that may be, the street is little changed since the days of its erection; it still remains a long, and, to those gazing down it from either end, apparently interminable line of large, substantial, three-storied, dull-coloured brick houses, stretching from Chandos-square in the south to Guelph Park in the north, so long, so uniform, so unspeakably dreary, as to give colour to the assertion of a celebrated wit, who, on his death-bed moaning forth that "there is an end to all things," added feebly, "except Great Walpole-street." ”