Part of a Roman road on Durdham Down

Summary

The monument includes an approximately 170m stretch of the Via Julia, the Roman road which originally ran from Aquae Sulis (Bath) to Abonae (Sea Mills) situated on a wide plateau known as Durdham Down.

Reasons for Designation

This stretch of Roman road on Durdham Down is scheduled, for the following principal reasons:

* Rarity: around 9,500 miles of Roman road were thought to have been built during the Roman occupation, but a much smaller proportion is known to survive physically, and few are scheduled;

* Survival: this part of the Roman Via Julia on Durdham Down survives well as earthwork remains of both the agger and roadside ditches;

* Potential: the Roman road will contain archaeological and environmental evidence relating to its construction, use, longevity, social, economic and political significance and eventual abandonment.

History

Roman roads were artificially made-up routes introduced to Britain by the Roman army from about AD 43. They facilitated both the conquest of the province and its subsequent administration. Their main purpose was to serve the Cursus Publicus, or Imperial mail service. In the Anglian and medieval periods, Roman roads often served as property boundaries. Although a number of roads fell out of use soon after the withdrawal of Rome from the province in the fifth century AD, many have continued in use down to the present day and are consequently sealed beneath modern roads. On the basis of construction technique, two main types of Roman road are distinguishable. The first has widely spaced boundary ditches and a broad elaborate agger comprising several layers of graded materials. The second usually has drainage ditches and a narrow simple agger of two or three successive layers. In addition to ditches and construction pits flanking the sides of the road, features of Roman roads can include central stone ribs, kerbs and culverts, not all of which will necessarily be contemporary with the original construction of the road. With the exception of the extreme south-west of the country, Roman roads are widely distributed throughout England and extend into Wales and lowland Scotland. They are highly representative of the period of Roman administration and provide important evidence of Roman civil engineering skills as well as the pattern of Roman conquest and settlement.

This portion of Roman road on Durdham Down was a stretch of the Via Julia, which ran from Aquae Sulis (Bath) to Abonae (Sea Mills) site of the C1 crossing of the River Severn into Wales, and is visible along part of its length as an earthwork. It is likely that the road was first laid in the mid-C1. The antiquary William Barrett first noted the existence of the linear earthwork remains of this stretch of the road in 1789, and in the early C19, part of the road was reportedly visible at the surface as a ‘stony track on the open down’ (Seyer, 1821). An excavation in 1899 across part of the monument, published in the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society in 1900 (A Trice Martin, 1900), showed that the form of the road conforms to the simpler type, with two layers of different types of gravelly soil, topped by large, flat stones (limestone) forming a pronounced agger. The ditches to either side were observed to be less well defined, and it was not possible accurately to determine their original width. A stretch of the earthwork measuring about 100m long was scheduled in 1949. Survey work in 1998 showed that this stretch of the road was truncated at its south-eastern end, just south of Stoke Road, by post-medieval quarrying, and beyond that by Stoke Road, but that it continued north-westwards beyond the scheduled area as a lower earthwork, as far as the north east-south west road known as Downleaze. Beyond this the Roman road disappears under the C19 housing development of Rockleaze. The survival of the feature is confirmed by recent aerial photography and LiDAR data. In 2001, an evaluation was undertaken adjacent to the water tower and reservoir which lie alongside the line of the Via Julia some distance to the west of the scheduled monument, on the north side of Stoke Road; this confirmed the character of the buried remains of the Roman road as recorded by Trice Martin in 1899.

Details

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS
The monument includes a stretch of the Via Julia, the Roman road which originally ran from Aquae Sulis (Bath) to Abonae (Sea Mills) situated on a wide plateau known as Durdham Down.

DESCRIPTION
The road, which runs approximately west-north-west to east-south-east lies on open common land and survives as a length of flat-topped bank measuring approximately 100m long, 10m wide and 0.6m high, with visible although largely buried ditches to the north and south sides. This continues a further approximately 70m further to the west on the same alignment, at roughly the same width, but as a lower earthwork, about 0.3m high at its highest.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

BS 88

Legacy System:

RSM - OCN

Sources

Books and journals
Trice Martin, A, The Roman Road on Durdham Down in Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Vol. 23, (1900), 309-311
Barrett, William, History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol, (1789)
Seyer, S, Memoirs, Historical and Topographical, of Bristol, Vol 1, (1821)

Websites
Bristol City Council: Clifton and Durdham Downs – A Landscape History (February 2006), accessed 08.08.2024 from https://www.locallearning.org.uk/Westbury/Downs%20History%20Final%20Report%20Feb%202006.pdf

Other
Bristol and Region Archaeological Service Report No. 912/2001: Archaeological Evaluation of Land Adjacent to Stoke Road, Durdham Down, Clifton, Bristol (2001)
Bristol Historic Environment Record 2084M: Roman Road on Durdham Down

End of official list entry

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