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00:00Today we take for granted the motorways, A-roads and city streets, over 2,000 miles of them that form the skeleton road map of Britain, and all because of the Romans, with their ingenuity and dogged determination to conquer everything in their path.
00:22I'm Dan Jones and I'm going to retrace the story of our Roman past along six of their most iconic roads.
00:30Each road tells the story of our Roman legacy and its rich history, from their very first road across Kent, which powered their invasion, to the vital routes which helped them conquer most of Britain, before being beaten into retreat by the Scots.
00:47In nearly 400 years of occupation, the Romans changed Britain forever by bringing their armies, ideas, buildings and religion.
00:57But the Romans couldn't have done any of it without one thing, their roads.
01:02Sometimes when you're walking or driving around Britain, you'll find yourself on a road that's absolutely ramrod straight, and the chances are that route could have been originally laid down nearly 2,000 years ago by Roman hands, just like Watland Street.
01:30Running all the way from the Kent coast to the Midlands, and on towards the Welsh borders, Watling Street has two defining features.
01:39It was the first road that the Romans built in Britain, and at 240 miles, it was also the longest.
01:46The story of Watling Street is the story of the Roman invasion. As I travel this road, I'll be able to plot just how the Romans conquered Britain, from the immediate widespread impact of building it, to the fierce battles fought along it.
02:012,000 years ago Britain was a great prize that had yet to be conquered by the Romans.
02:09The Roman Empire lasted for more than 1,500 years. During that time, the Romans invaded southern and eastern Europe, and large parts of North Africa.
02:18Wherever they went, they took their language, their art, their religion, and their government.
02:24Now, to keep this massive empire under control, they needed to be able to move their armies about quickly, and to do that, they needed to build roads.
02:33Before the Romans launched their full invasion, Julius Caesar came on a scouting mission in 55 BC.
02:43He landed with a small force of Romans on the southeast coast of England.
02:48Caesar came ashore somewhere around here, at Pegwell Bay in Kent.
02:52Now, the way he told it, this was a heroic endeavour. Don't forget that, in Roman times, Britain was the edge of the known world.
03:00Now, in fact, Caesar didn't stay very long, but while he was here, the locals made quite an impression.
03:07He wrote,
03:08All the Britons paint themselves with a dark blue colour. By this means they appear more frightening in battle.
03:15They have long hair and shave their bodies, all except for their head and upper lip.
03:20Groups of ten or twelve men share their wives in common, particularly between brothers, fathers and sons.
03:30Caesar made his mark by establishing trading links with the empire, but the Romans would ultimately return in force.
03:38I'm heading to the site of the key Roman invasion, where the story of Watling Street and Britain's Roman road network really begins, Richborough.
03:47At the time, it would have been a trading port for the Britons.
03:53When the Emperor Claudius sent his invasion fleet in 43 AD, this time the Romans really meant business.
04:00Claudius brought a massive army of four legions and 20,000 auxiliaries.
04:05They set sail from the coast of Gaul, that's modern France, and landed at Richborough.
04:14This was where the Roman armies gathered as they began their invasion of Britain, along a road they were about to build, Watling Street.
04:22Dr. Andrew Roberts is one of the historians who looks after the ancient Roman remains where the road begins.
04:29This is Richborough. It is. It's Wat-Wat-Wat-Richborough.
04:31The Richborough site was founded at the time of the Claudian invasion.
04:35So, Andrew, we're now standing on the beginning of Watling Street.
04:39I mean, it doesn't necessarily look like it.
04:42Well, it was a bit grander in Roman times, but it's still pretty impressive today.
04:46We're standing on what was effectively a crossroads that sat beneath a monumental arch that towered over Richborough.
04:55Probably would have been seen for some miles away.
04:58The Romans were master arch builders. We see them all over the Empire.
05:02The arch on Watling Street might have looked something like this reconstruction.
05:06Arches similar to this have been found across Europe.
05:09And what's the idea that when people came through this arch, they really knew that they were now entering Roman Britain?
05:16Absolutely. Part of the reason why the arch is built here was to mark Richborough as the Excessus Britanniae,
05:23the official gateway to Roman Britain.
05:25Was Watling Street essential to the success of the invasion?
05:28I think, yeah, I think Watling Street was as part of the road network that was quickly formalised by the army.
05:35So Watling Street is very important for getting men and equipment and supplies further inland to the central parts of Britain.
05:43And then after that, Richborough becomes a port and a town.
05:46So it's going to be an important trade route for Roman goods coming from well across the Empire.
05:55As I set off on my journey across the very first Roman road in Britain,
06:00it's amazing to think I'll be following the same route taken by Roman emperors, generals and centurions almost 2,000 years ago.
06:09As the Romans headed up Watling Street to conquer Britannia, they would have faced difficult journeys on foot or in chariots.
06:16As it won't be much fun walking in the pouring rain along the motorway that takes the same route,
06:23I'll cover some of this journey by car.
06:25From Richborough, Watling Street snakes its way west to Canterbury and then on towards London.
06:32It shares a very similar route to what is now the A2.
06:35Parts of the road still use the same name.
06:38Watling Street would have brought the Romans to the first major obstacle in their invasion plan.
06:44I'm now in Rochester, which is about 35 miles from where the Romans landed during their invasion of Britain in the first century AD.
06:54And this is a crucial point in the history of Watling Street,
06:57because when the Roman army arrived here, they were faced with two major obstacles.
07:02The first was an army of native Britons, but the second was the river Medway itself.
07:08And crossing it would inspire one of the greatest feats of engineering in the whole history of Roman Britain.
07:15After defeating the tribes who were defending the river, it was vital that the Romans found a way to cross the mighty Medway,
07:23to avoid having to take a massive detour.
07:26The crossing of the river had been a major factor in the battle.
07:29How did they then go on to make that crossing permanent?
07:32Well, the key thing is they built a river crossing, and they built a river crossing here in Rochester.
07:37So Rochester's here because it's where the Romans decided to cross Watling Street over the river Medway.
07:43Do we know how they built the bridge?
07:45Maybe. The first thing that was here was a bridge of boats.
07:48There may be a temporary, semi-permanent wooden bridge.
07:51And finally, when they got their act together, the Romans built these fantastic stone-built bridges.
07:55And what was so good about this particular position?
07:57It's basically where Watling Street actually hits, literally hits, the river Medway.
08:01It's a very good bridging point because it's got a very firm riverbed.
08:04How important was this bridge in the history of Roman Britain at large?
08:10It's one of the most important bridges in Roman Britain.
08:14Because remember, Watling Street is the Roman M1.
08:17So Watling Street is a major military trunk road.
08:20This bridge is a key element along it. Without this bridge, there'd be no Watling Street.
08:25Obviously, it was nothing like the modern steel bridge that's here now.
08:29It would have looked something like this artist's impression.
08:32A stone structure that lasted for hundreds of years, right into the early medieval period,
08:38when it was eventually destroyed by river ice.
08:41But there's another reason why Rochester is important in the history of Watling Street.
08:46In 2016, a great discovery was made in the basement of a shop on the High Street.
08:53I've heard that underneath this tattoo parlour, a little bit of Watling Street still survives.
08:59Hey, Sebastian.
09:02Hey, man.
09:03How you doing?
09:04Not good.
09:05So you've got some Roman artefacts downstairs?
09:06Yeah, sure.
09:08Sebastian Nowatzky has been inking people with anchors, roses and skulls for years.
09:14Most of them unaware of what lay beneath his tattoo chair.
09:18Oh, my God.
09:19That's amazing.
09:20You've actually got a 2,000-year-old Roman road running through the middle of your tattoo shop.
09:27How did they discover that this was actually here in the first place?
09:32Yeah, the builders discovered this, and the archaeologists came over and checked,
09:37and apparently it's 2,000 years old, so...
09:39You ever heard of another tattoo shop with a Roman road running under?
09:42No, not really, no.
09:43I'm the lucky one here.
09:44It's crazy that it's down here in the basement of your shop when the High Street is, what,
09:48like two or three metres above us.
09:51So I guess in Roman times the level of the town was just much lower.
09:55Yeah, that's apparently the original level of Rochester.
09:58So do you worry when you're working?
10:00You're, like, going to spill ink on the Roman road?
10:02I'm pretty clean when I'm working, so...
10:06So tell me, were there tattoos in Roman times?
10:08Yeah, there was.
10:09Yeah, Romans used tattooing for to mark slaves just in case they run away.
10:17They will find out who they belong to.
10:20Also, they were using for criminals to tattoo all the crimes on the visible places,
10:26like forearms or any visible parts of the bodies to mark their crimes.
10:32So it must have really hurt getting a tattoo in Roman times.
10:35I mean, what were they using?
10:36It's a bone or...?
10:37Definitely, they haven't got the equipment we have nowadays.
10:40Probably using some stones.
10:42I would imagine they cut the skin and just inject the ink.
10:46That's...
10:47Do you have to, like, take a lot of care to keep it in good condition?
10:51We clean the stones from time to time just because it's a basement so we have quite big humidity.
10:58Yeah.
10:59So for me it's kind of crazy to think that right here, Empress could have passed along this street.
11:04You can really see the quality, the brilliance of the engineering.
11:09All of these slabs perfectly laid out and incredibly robust and still in use.
11:15Still standing up to everyday use nearly 2,000 years after they were laid down.
11:20And, of course, what you can also see, even in this very short stretch of Watling Street,
11:25is these beautiful parallel straight lines, absolutely characteristic of Roman road building.
11:33So I suppose the question is, how did the Romans get their roads so straight?
11:38That's exactly what I'll be investigating next as I make my way further north along the oldest of Britain's Roman roads.
11:55I'm uncovering the story behind the great Roman roads that have run the length and breadth of Britain for hundreds of years.
12:02My first journey is along 240 miles of Watling Street, the first of their roads in Britain,
12:08used by their army to conquer our land.
12:11But how did they actually go about building it?
12:14To find out, I'm meeting Andrew Hyam, an archaeologist from Leicester University,
12:19who has studied Roman building techniques.
12:22So, Andy, imagine I'm a Roman, not too much of a stretch, I know.
12:25How do I get my road straight?
12:28It's a very simple principle. There's no GPS or anything like that.
12:32So long as you've got a good line of sight.
12:34If you've got three sticks, you can create a straight line.
12:37You have your surveyor and you have your assistant.
12:40The assistant has all the sticks. The surveyor stands in one place.
12:44You set a stake at the far end where you want your straight line,
12:49and you'll get your assistant with your direction to lay out the sticks in between.
12:54And why did the Romans want their roads to be so straight?
12:57Well, firstly, because they could.
12:59It's not like a modern road where it has to go around services and villages and towns.
13:04They could plough straight on through.
13:06But it also makes it the shortest line between two points.
13:10And is this something that was unique to Roman Britain,
13:12or did you see it all the way across the Roman Empire?
13:15No, no. I mean, in North Africa, in Germany, in France, in Britain,
13:20all the systems were very similar.
13:23So one rule generally applied across the whole of the Roman Empire.
13:27OK. Shall we see how it works?
13:28I think we should, yes.
13:29Well, then, there you go. I'll keep that one.
13:31All right.
13:32The lead surveyor was called an agramental.
13:35So I guess that makes me the agramental's mate.
13:38OK, so we're going to build a straight line now for our road,
13:41from our survey point just here towards that tree point.
13:45Right.
13:46So if you put up regular intervals, your poles,
13:49I'll tell you whether to go to the right or to the left,
13:51or whether it's straight on.
13:53Is it pretty simple?
13:54It's that simple.
13:55Right.
13:56OK, right a bit.
14:00Right a bit.
14:01Good.
14:02Good.
14:03That here.
14:04OK.
14:05When the Romans left Britain in the early 5th century,
14:07these simple but effective techniques were lost to the Britons they left behind.
14:11Left a bit.
14:12A bit more.
14:13It wasn't until the Middle Ages that we returned to anything like their level of sophistication.
14:18OK.
14:19Right a bit.
14:20Good.
14:21Keep going.
14:22Keep going.
14:23One way.
14:26Perfect.
14:27Spot on.
14:29We've got a road.
14:31We have a road.
14:32As well as his simple Roman-style survey poles,
14:36Andrew has another piece of Roman road building technology he wants to show me.
14:40So, we've built our Roman road.
14:43Now we want to build a town.
14:45Streets need to be at right angles.
14:47They do.
14:48The Romans and these things matter to us.
14:50How do we do it?
14:51Still using very, very simple techniques, nothing complicated,
14:55but we need a slightly more advanced piece of kit.
14:58Right.
14:59So, what's in the box?
15:00Another elegant piece of Roman surveying equipment.
15:04The gromer.
15:05Gromer.
15:06If you want to look after that.
15:07It all works, again, on lines of sight and gravity.
15:11And this is technology that we know the Romans had?
15:13We have evidence of tombstones with pictures of a Roman gromer engraved on it.
15:19Really?
15:20Yes.
15:21So, the Romans are very proud of this technology, I imagine?
15:24They really were.
15:25I mean, again, the Romans were experts at taking very simple techniques, standardising it,
15:32and using it to very good advantage.
15:35And then this is the actual working piece, which fits onto a peg at the top up here.
15:41How does it work?
15:42Again, as we saw when we were building the Roman road, it's all on lines of sight.
15:47So, we've got four weights, each in line with each other.
15:50So, you line these two strings up, and you get a straight line that way.
15:53I can then turn at 90 degrees, you've got another one.
15:57Amazing, isn't it?
15:58A piece of kit like this generated a pattern of streets and town planning that we see from
16:03right across the Roman Empire, from Britain in the west to Syria in the east.
16:08It's so...
16:09I'm always amazed at how simple it is.
16:17In the Middle Ages, when understanding of a lot of Roman technology had been lost,
16:21people found it hard to believe that humans could have built such long, straight roads.
16:27And that's why a lot of sections of Roman road have been nicknamed the Devil's Causeway.
16:33To the locals, with no knowledge of forgotten Roman skills, that supernatural explanation could have made sense.
16:40These aren't the work of the Devil, they're the work of an agramensor.
16:45Simple but effective techniques like these help the Romans push Watling Street further across Kent,
16:51as their invasion and conquest of Britain continue.
16:55The towns of Dartford and Bexley Heath now stand on this historic route.
17:00And in Bexley Heath, it's now totally blocked by a superstore.
17:04So we have to turn off.
17:06Around eight miles south-east of central London, the road reaches the high ground at Blackheath,
17:11and then continues down into the Thames Valley, towards the river.
17:15Which means that Watling Street runs straight into the place that's grown to be our nation's capital.
17:21Historians are uncertain whether the land was occupied when the Romans arrived,
17:25but we do know that at the time it was a marshy area,
17:29threaded with small rivers and streams, like the River Fleet.
17:33They're still there today, but deep underground.
17:36Fleet Street runs directly over the ancient watercourse.
17:40From this unpromising start, within 20 years the Romans had built a small town,
17:44roughly half a square mile in size, with a fortified garrison.
17:51Londinium rapidly became a thriving hub, providing road links across Britain,
17:56and to the larger empire across the Channel.
18:00To learn more about the life the Romans created for themselves here,
18:04I've come to visit some fascinating Roman remains,
18:07buried under the city just north of London Bridge.
18:10Two thousand years ago, this site was a temple to Mithras,
18:14a Roman fertility god who inspired cult worship.
18:18I'm meeting historian Sophie Jackson to find out more about what was uncovered here.
18:23When the Roman armies used roads like Watling Street to colonise a place,
18:27they carried a lot of baggage with them.
18:29So this is an amazing display. What is it all?
18:32Well, this is a very small sample of the many, many thousands of finds
18:37which were excavated when the Bloomberg building went up.
18:41There are about 600 objects in this case, there were 14,000 back in the store.
18:46So everything that we can see here came out of the ground under our feet?
18:49Yes, yeah.
18:50Gosh, that's incredible.
18:51Is the amazing richness of all of this stuff to do with the fact that so many Roman roads connected through London?
18:59Yes. I mean, the reason London is here is for a reason of transport logistics.
19:04It's the first place up the sort of Thames estuary that the river could be crossed
19:10and that there was enough dry ground either side and suitable ground to build a road network.
19:14And, you know, where we are, we're probably not more than 30, 40 metres from Roman Watling Street,
19:20which was one of the major thoroughfares.
19:23Goods are coming up to the Thames, they're being unloaded in the ports
19:26and then coming out of London to sort of feed the conquest of Britain.
19:30Tell me about some of the most intriguing ones to you.
19:32Ah, well, there's so much to say.
19:34I mean, probably one of the most significant finds from the site were the Roman wooden writing tablets.
19:40They don't normally survive because wood, they're made of quite thin wood and it normally rots,
19:44but this site was very waterlogged. Water normally keeps out oxygen, which causes decay.
19:48We've got some examples of whole ones, but this little fragment here is particularly interesting.
19:54You can still see writing on it.
19:56Yeah, and it's actually scratched on the outside.
19:58So this is the address that would have been on the outside of the tablet.
20:01And it says Londinio Murgontio, and it's the earliest address in London.
20:06Basically it says, to Murgontius, in London.
20:09Yeah.
20:10And this is probably, certainly one of, if not the earliest reference to London in history.
20:16That's amazing.
20:17Anywhere.
20:18This tablet has been dated to around AD 65, and it's just one of thousands of fascinating finds.
20:25We have some finds which are associated with the military, Roman military.
20:29So we have four iron spearheads.
20:32And we also have quite a few bits and pieces of Roman armour.
20:36When you think of Roman armour, you think of sort of really impressive bits of metal.
20:39But these are all the many, many sort of straps and hinges which we use to fix all the different pieces of armour.
20:46What all these artefacts tell us is who's coming to London in the first few years.
20:51Where people are coming from, you know, from Gaul, modern France, from Germany, from Italy, not surprising.
20:57And then gradually, as we go up through time, we see more of the sort of gradual Romanisation of the native British people who are here.
21:04So we see people copying Roman wares, copying, you know, the style of brooches change, the style of pottery changes and so on.
21:12So Watling Street was the driving force behind the Roman expansion into the new province.
21:18Because of it, London became a hub, and the invaders built more roads to intersect with it.
21:23Stain Street, Ermine Street and Portway.
21:26But historians have a problem.
21:28It's hard to trace the route of Watling Street through London.
21:31No one's quite sure where it goes after it disappears at Southwark, back there, before it re-emerges just north of Hyde Park.
21:41Some historians believe it travelled through the City of London, the route of Cheapside, Holborn and Oxford Street.
21:48While others believe it crossed the Thames at Westminster.
21:51It's thought there was a Ford here 2,000 years ago.
21:54And to add to the mystery, there's another Watling Street near St Paul's.
22:00But it's totally unrelated.
22:01It's a version of the medieval Etheling Street, meaning Street of Princes.
22:08Whichever route it takes, we pick it up again a mile or so away at the western end of Oxford Street, right near Marble Arch.
22:15Despite appearances, the arch is not Roman, but a Victorian homage.
22:20An old gateway to Buckingham Palace that was shifted here in the 1840s.
22:26I'm standing on the Edgware Road, the modern day A5.
22:29And it's the perfect example of how Britain's Roman road network is still in use today.
22:35Now it might not look much like it, but this is Watling Street.
22:39From here, the road goes all the way through north-west London and then on 150 miles to Shropshire.
22:46And there's plenty to see along the way.
22:48As Watling Street leaves London, it heads north through the suburbs towards the Hertfordshire town of Radlet.
22:55It's a stretch of the A5 that is still known by the ancient name.
23:01Now this section of Watling Street is important because it runs through a region that gives the road its name.
23:08Although that dates to a long time after the Romans left.
23:12A Saxon tribe known as the Wacklingas once lived around here.
23:16Their territory was known as the Wacklinga Casta.
23:19By the 9th century AD, the road they used was known as Wackling Street, or as we call it today, Watling Street.
23:26We don't know what names the Romans used for any of their roads in this country.
23:32We know that back home in Italy they had legendary streets like the Via Appia.
23:37But the names in Britain date from long after the Romans left.
23:41Throughout the medieval period, the name Watling Street was applied to the entire route,
23:47all 240 miles of it, running from the Kent coast to Shropshire.
23:52As I continue north, I'll enter one of Roman Britain's largest cities
23:56and discover that there was trouble ahead for our invaders
23:59when they had to confront one of Britain's most notorious warriors.
24:11By travelling along Watling Street, the first Roman road built in Britain,
24:15I'm investigating the Roman invasion and occupation of Britain in the 1st century AD.
24:20This road was used to carry their armies into the heartland of what they knew as Britannia.
24:26So far I've covered around 100 miles, from the Kent coast to Hertfordshire, roughly halfway.
24:33I'm on my way to the next major site along the route,
24:36which began as a vital staging post for the invading army.
24:40I'm walking along Watling Street in the direction of St Albans, which is just up ahead.
24:45Now, nearly 2,000 years ago, St Albans was known as Verulamium.
24:49It grew up along this street to become one of the largest and most prosperous towns in Roman Britain.
24:58We're thousands of miles from Italy, but like all their occupied territories in Europe,
25:03the Romans were keen to make this new town feel just like home.
25:07Verulamium had buildings such as a theatre, houses with underfloor heating,
25:12and beautiful mosaic floors, just like Rome itself.
25:16This remarkable town was discovered and excavated in the 1930s,
25:21and I'm meeting David Thorold, curator of the Verulamium Museum,
25:25to discover what makes it so unique.
25:28If this was Roman times, where would we be standing now?
25:31We're just at the gateway into the entrance to the town,
25:34so if you're travelling out of London along Watling Street,
25:37this is where you'd approach the town from.
25:40And what we have here are the foundations of the gateway as you entered into the town.
25:45Can you give me a picture of what this would have looked like?
25:48What we would have seen here is basically two entranceways through the middle of a gateway,
25:55which would allow the carriages and vehicles to come inside and out,
25:58and then on the outside we have a gate, a tower, which would be framing the building,
26:04and then over the top we'd be looking at a crenellated walkway and guard posts on it.
26:09So is this primarily for security, or was it just to impress people as they arrived?
26:14It's probably a bit of both, to be honest.
26:16So it was made to look impressive to people from London as they approached.
26:21So when the Romans arrived here, what did they find? Was this already a town?
26:25Kind of. We're in a sort of shallow valley here with a marshy river,
26:31and Verulamium seems to have developed as a crossing point on the river for trade purposes.
26:37And how were the Romans received? I mean, were they welcomed, or was there a lot of hostility and antagonism?
26:42Well, that is interesting, because the local tribe were on very friendly terms with the Romans,
26:48didn't oppose their presence, and may indeed have been helping them out.
26:52So it looks very strongly like the local tribe decided that they were actually better off being part of the empire than opposing it.
27:01By 50 AD, Verulamium had been granted the rank of municipium, meaning its citizens had official protection.
27:08The town soon benefited from Roman influence.
27:12David, what am I looking at here?
27:14This is a very nice example of a Roman mosaic.
27:17So this mosaic was once part of what sounds to me like a very plush property.
27:22Absolutely. This is an extremely wealthy townhouse for a rich citizen of Verulamium.
27:28Do we know where the craftsmen came from who made a mosaic like this?
27:33If this wasn't native technology to Britain?
27:35Well, we think it probably was.
27:38Certainly by the time these mosaics are going down, the Romans have been here for many generations.
27:45And what we seem to be looking at is a local producer who is designing and laying most of the mosaics in the region.
27:55Mosaics were common in ancient Greece, so the Romans were adopting someone else's idea, as they so often did.
28:02Created from thousands of tiny tiles, mosaic making was highly skilled work.
28:07They often featured gods, animals and complex geometric designs.
28:12And they were high value status symbols for any Roman who wanted to show off to the neighbours.
28:18And did the wealth of Verulamium and houses like this depend on Watling Street?
28:24Being on Watling Street, you're on one of the main arteries of the Roman Empire.
28:28So we may be out in the sticks in the province of Britain, but you are linked to all the other towns in the Roman Empire.
28:37And Verulamium has an advantage in that it is very close to the port of Londinium.
28:43So we have a lot of business passing through.
28:47So you have merchants passing through the town, you have traders passing through.
28:51Lots of buying and selling going on.
28:53And you've got goods going back out the other way as well.
28:56So it's a vital link in the business of empire.
29:03The locals in St Albans might have been compliant with this Romanisation.
29:07But north-east of here, there was a tribal queen who wasn't convinced
29:11that buddying up with the Romans was a good idea.
29:15Boudicca was queen of the Iceni tribe who came from Anglia.
29:18And she wanted revenge against the Romans for the way they'd treated her lands and her people.
29:23Boudicca's husband was king of the Iceni tribe.
29:28And when he died, the Romans forcibly seized his land, flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters.
29:35She wanted revenge.
29:38She rallied like-minded tribes and together they went on a killing spree across eastern Britain.
29:44Now the Roman historian Tacitus described what happened.
29:49He says,
29:50The whole island rose in arms under the command of Boudicca.
29:53They hunted down the Roman troops in their scattered posts, stormed the forts and assaulted the colony itself,
30:00which they saw as the seat of their enslavement.
30:03Nor did the angry victors deny themselves any of the savagery characteristic of barbarians.
30:10Boudicca turned the Romans' own roads against them and used them to travel south from her homeland.
30:19First she attacked and destroyed the Roman city of Camulodunum, now Colchester, and then their capital, Londinium.
30:27Leaving London in ruins, Boudicca's army continued their uprising and travelled north-west up Watling Street to Verulamium.
30:36The elegant town centre was burned to the ground.
30:39Hundreds of citizens were slaughtered, but Boudicca still wasn't finished.
30:44Leaving Verulamium as a smoking ruin, she headed further north with her army to face her biggest battle yet,
30:51the Battle of Watling Street.
30:57Boudicca's army came face to face with around 10,000 Roman legionaries travelling in the opposite direction.
31:04The soldiers were commanded by the general Paulinus, who had recently put down a Druid uprising in north Wales.
31:11I'm close by Watling Street, not far from the place where Boudicca's army fought with Romans.
31:16Now, because of that uprising, the Romans built a string of defensive forts here.
31:21I've come to explore a site built on the remains of one of them.
31:27Taking a slight detour from Watling Street, I'm heading to the Warwickshire village of Badgington, near Coventry.
31:34It's the site of Lunt Fort, built in the time of the first Roman invasion, around 60 AD.
31:40It stayed in use for 20 years.
31:43The site was rediscovered by archaeologists in the 1930s, and was partially rebuilt in the 1970s on the original foundations.
31:51Hello.
31:52How are you doing?
31:53I'm all right, thank you. Thanks for braving the weather.
31:55Richard Brooks is a Roman expert here.
31:58What is this place?
31:59That's a good question. We're standing in what we call a gyrus, which is from the Greek word for circle.
32:06This is the only structure of its kind that's ever been discovered anywhere in a Roman fort, anywhere in the Empire.
32:13So we think this is a cavalry training ring.
32:16Wow.
32:17Because the Lunt was built at the height of the Boudiccan Revolt, either just before or just after the climactic battle of Watling Street against Boudicca.
32:25I feel pretty confident in saying this wasn't built in Roman times.
32:28It's definitely not.
32:29When was it then?
32:30It was built in the 1970s by 31 base squadron, the Royal Engineers.
32:34They built everything that we can see, the granary, the gyrus that we're standing in, and the gateway,
32:39in the same way, using the same methods and materials as the Roman soldiers would have done 2,000 years previously.
32:45So no chainsaws or cranes or earthmovers.
32:48And even for people like the Royal Engineers who are pretty skilled at building things, it was quite a difficult job.
32:54What else would have been at the fort?
32:55Well, we think it was quite a modestly sized fort.
32:59The idea was to use the Lunt to basically keep an eye on the locals and make sure they didn't cause any more trouble.
33:06What happened when the Romans did realise what was happening with Boudicca's Revolt?
33:10Well, they made all haste to bring battle to Boudicca, but it was a very rushed, very...
33:18It wasn't perfect conditions for the Romans because they were caught napping, they had to make up ground.
33:25They might have been rushed, but they had a strategy.
33:28Boudicca's army was much bigger than that of Paulinus, so he had to seize the advantage.
33:33He did it by forcing the battle to take place in an area that was hemmed in by forest.
33:39This meant the Britons couldn't outflank or overwhelm the Romans, and so they were forced to take them head on.
33:46And there was no one better at fighting in formation than the Roman legions.
33:50Boudicca's army was destroyed. The revolt was over.
33:55What happened with Boudicca?
33:56All that we can be certain of is that she died at the point of the end of the Boudiccan Revolt, but we don't know the circumstances.
34:05It was suggested that she took ill and died. She could have fallen in the battle itself, or she could have drunk poison to kill herself rather than being caught and punished, taken to Rome in chains by the Romans.
34:18So I don't think we'll ever be certain of that either.
34:21The locals were clad in skins and cloth, but what was the equipment that gave the average Roman soldier his advantage?
34:29Richard has roped in a friend, George, to help show me.
34:32This is the standard uniform in the first century in the Roman Empire.
34:37Can I try it on?
34:39Oh yes.
34:40What goes first?
34:41I'd put the tunica on first.
34:43What's this made out of?
34:45It's made of wool, which is widely available. They're sort of locally made.
34:51They started to wear what we refer to as these short breeches.
34:56Initially, when the Romans encountered tribes, people like the Iceni, like the native Britons, and they were wearing trousers.
35:05They dubbed them Feminalia, because they thought it was effeminate to wear trousers.
35:09Men should run around essentially wearing a skirt.
35:12I think we need something for your neck. We need a nice scarf.
35:16Thank you very much. So this is just round your neck?
35:19Round your neck. A bit like a neckerchief.
35:22Sort of cravat style.
35:23A little bit.
35:24This is to stop your neck being chafed by the leather thong. It keeps your helmet on.
35:30So you can stick your head in as well.
35:32That's the way. Optima. There we are.
35:35Optima?
35:36Optima. Very good.
35:38Heavy on the shoulders.
35:40When we put your next item on, your belt, you will find that a lot of the weight that's on your shoulders now will go onto your hips and it will be even more comfortable.
35:48Strap for your sword. It's mounted onto your beltius.
35:52Okay, right.
35:54Now, breathe in, soldier.
35:56There you are.
35:58And I need something to protect my head, I suppose.
36:00I'd say that's probably a good idea.
36:02For this, we refer to it as a gallia.
36:06A gallia? Why is that?
36:08Well, because the rough basic design of it is very similar to helmets that Gaulish tribes in Gallia were using.
36:16Modern France, right?
36:17Modern France.
36:18The Romans weren't above taking ideas that they thought worked from conquered tribes and basically making them slightly better.
36:26Your sword, your gladius, the full title for that is Gladius Hispaniensis.
36:30Now, because you're an auxiliar, what you have here is your typical auxiliary shield. This we refer to as a clipius.
36:36A clipius.
36:38It's from, we think it's from a Greek term, so it covers you pretty much from head to toe, especially when you get into a fighting stance.
36:46Next, it's time for the main event, the great sword.
36:50The gladius is primarily a stabbing weapon. It's optimised for that. It's got very nasty, sharp, tapered points.
36:58The thing about the way the Romans fought was they're all very close together, going forward towards the enemy.
37:02And if you were to swing the sword about and slash it and swing it when you're really close to it, it would be fine in trouble.
37:08Exactly. You don't want to kill your own team mates.
37:10So you would thrust forward with it.
37:12And the good thing about that is not only are you not endangering your soldiers on either side, but you keep your shield in front of you to protect yourself at the same time.
37:20So you're really hard to kill. You're defending yourself and you're attacking at the same time.
37:24And this is what Boudicca's warriors experienced in the Battle of Watling Street.
37:28They were forced into a narrow defile where their long chopping swords counted for pretty much nothing and they just got in each other's way.
37:36So the Roman infantry who were used to fighting close and in a brutal fashion could just go to work.
37:45Boudicca's revolt may have been quashed on Watling Street, but the war between the Romans and the native Britons raged on.
37:51Many of the tribes who lived here didn't take kindly to being controlled by a foreign power.
37:57So Roman legions spent decades putting down rebellions in Wales, Yorkshire, the South West and Wales again.
38:06It took the Romans more than a century before they could claim that they truly ruled Britannia.
38:13But as I get towards the end of Watling Street, it reveals something that might come as a surprise.
38:19In the end, this wasn't so much about beating our ancestors, but joining them.
38:25My journey along Britain's longest and oldest Roman road, Watling Street, has taken me on a truly revealing route.
38:38Starting at the Kent coast in the south-east, I've travelled more than 200 miles across the heart of England, retracing the steps of the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD.
38:50Watling Street was the trunk road that enabled the Romans to push their conquest across the length and breadth of the land.
38:58And nearly 2,000 years ago, it came to an end here, a place that for the Romans really was the end of the earth.
39:05This is Roxeter in Shropshire, which the Romans called Viriconia.
39:10Now, like many places in the first century AD, it started life as a Roman legionary fortress, but a civilian settlement grew up around it, and soon it was a bustling city.
39:20From here there were roads and trackways that branched out into north Wales and further north to Hadrian's Wall and beyond.
39:30But historians agree that Roxeter marks the end of the line for Watling Street.
39:35Cameron Moffat is the curator of collections here, with expert knowledge of how the Romans and the British combined to become something new.
39:42So this is part of what was once, then, a very busy Roman town. Why did the Romans have a town here?
39:49It's very much to do with Watling Street and access to the important ports and the important places in the far south-east.
39:59And Roxeter really is effectively the terminus for Watling Street.
40:03After the Romans arrived here in the mid-first century, we've got a military base, but it quite quickly turns into a civilian settlement.
40:11It does. I mean, first of all, you've got your military establishment, and there will have been settlements of local people on the peripheries.
40:19What happens is, by the 80s AD, the military has moved on. They've conquered North Wales, they've moved the legion up to Chester,
40:28and they don't need this for military purposes anymore. And what they do is they hand it over to the local tribe, the Cornovii,
40:36and they say, OK, here you go, make this into a town, and then we can come and charge you loads of tax.
40:43Tell me about this arch. It's absolutely enormous, isn't it?
40:46This piece of masonry is called the Old Work, and it's been called that for a few hundred years now.
40:51And this is what survives of the Basilica, and this was an enormous exercise hall where people came and worked up a sweat.
41:00Like a gym?
41:01A gym, exactly, and with a few more functions as well.
41:05And it was very tall, really. You could have seen this for many miles around.
41:08So this was an exercise hall. What else was going on here?
41:11You would get little traders who might be selling snacks, they might be offering to do your hair.
41:18If you've come and you've done your exercise, worked up a sweat, you cannot move on through what was a set of double doors into the bath suite,
41:27where you would then continue the whole process, going through cool rooms and then into warm rooms,
41:33having a slave scrape you down to get rid of all the nasty sweat.
41:39We're not in Pompeii, so I assume that wasn't buried. This has been standing since the Romans left it.
41:44That has been standing since the Romans left it, and it's really a tribute to their building techniques and the strength of their mortar.
41:53And those enterprising locals weren't averse to grabbing a bit of Roman luxury for themselves.
41:59Cameron's about to show me a reconstruction of the underfloor heating beneath the bath house.
42:04It sounds like a very modern idea.
42:06And so this was the hypercross. So what happened here?
42:09Well, where we are standing now, we are below floor level, below Roman floor level.
42:14And this is where the heated air that was generated by an enormous furnace down at the far end of the building,
42:20this is how it moved underneath the floors and then came up into individual rooms through vents like we can see over there.
42:30So this is the famous Roman underfloor heating?
42:33This is it.
42:34Was bathing something particularly Roman or would it have been familiar already to the local tribes of people?
42:39Well, bathing in this way with all these elaborate facilities, this was definitely Roman.
42:44But I think it was appreciated by people wherever the Romans went.
42:49This is sort of the last bath house on Watling Street, if you like.
42:53Would there have been a sense that this was a frontier town, you know, end of civilization, if you like, for the Romans or not?
43:02You know, the Romans, they got everywhere.
43:04But this was the place in this part of the country where you had all the facilities that you could possibly need.
43:13And in addition to the baths, there was a huge forum over the other side of Watling Street where you would have the authorities and legal services and everything is concentrated here.
43:29What started out as a military invasion in 43 AD, less than 100 years later, had resulted in a new kind of civilization.
43:39One in which the Romans and the Britons were living side by side.
43:44This wasn't just about rest and relaxation for Roman soldiers struggling through a harsh British winter.
43:51This was built by and for the local British population, enjoying all the comforts of Roman civilization here at the end of Watling Street.
44:02The road that was built for invasion and conquest, whose story is littered with bloody battles with native Britons, eventually reached its end in a town where the Romans and the Britons found themselves forced to live in harmony and share cultures and even bathtubs.
44:19There's more with Dan next Wednesday night at 8.
44:23The Romans didn't quite impact Caledonia, but you can discover more about Secret Scotland with Susan Kalman, new on Friday at 8.
44:31And new next, the epic tale of the naval high flyer who became an icon of ruthless ambition.
44:37Nelson, Britain's naval hero, in just a moment.
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