Roman roads are, perhaps, the most iconic roads in England. Roads like the Fosse Way stretch for miles through the countryside in a more or less straight line. Very simple and very straightforward. However, like most things in life this doesn't really tell the full story.
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| Roman Roads |
For a start whilst the major Roman roads may well conform to this description there would be a series of lesser roads that connected towns and their surrounding hinterland. These probably weren't that straight and may well have been reused older roads such as the salt ways. Even with this complication the major roads would be very straightforward to plot. This may be the case in other areas but not in the research area.
The Chester Road or Via Devana once was a major imperial road linking the Roman city of Colchester (Camulodunum ) to Roman city of Chester (Deva Victrix) via Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum). The road from Leicester to Colchester was well known but up until the 1990's the route of the road from Leicester to the River Trent was unknown. The road had disappeared leaving few of the usual clues in the landscape to suggest a road existed at all. The Ashby to Leicester road went in a similar direction and yet this doesn't follow the route of the old Roman road at all.
This is not the only missing Roman road in the research area. Close to the Leicestershire/Derbyshire border is the small village of Stretton en le Field. There is nothing unusual about the village other than its name. The Stretton element indicates that very near to the village a major Roman road is to be found and yet to this date no definitive evidence has been brought together to suggest where this road went. It has been suggested that the nearby salt road (central) may be the road referred to but this is not a major road nor is it close enough for this to be case.
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