The Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past
Thursday 5 October
Castle Hill Baptist Church
4.30pm
Have you ever heard the march of legions on a lonely country road?
For two thousand years, the roads the Romans built have determined the flow of ideas and folktales, where battles were fought and where pilgrims trod. Almost everyone in Britain lives close to a Roman road, if only we knew where to look.
Christopher Hadley takes us on a lyrical journey, retracing and searching for an elusive Roman road that sprang from one of the busiest road hubs in Roman Britain. His passage is not always easy, for time and nature have erased many clues: bridges rotted and whole woods grew across the route; carters found an easier ford downstream; the road’s milestones broken up to mend new paths. Year after year, the heavy clay swallowed whole lengths and the once-mighty road became a bridleway, an overgrown hollow way, a parched mark in the soil.