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00:00Today we take for granted the motorways, A-roads and city streets, over 2,000 miles of them that
00:10form the skeleton roadmap of Britain and all because of the Romans with their ingenuity and
00:18dogged determination to conquer everything in their path. I'm Dan Jones and I'm going to retrace
00:24the story of our Roman past along six of their most iconic roads. Each road tells the story of
00:32our Roman legacy and its rich history from their very first road across Kent which powered their
00:38invasion to the vital routes which helped them conquer most of Britain before being beaten into
00:44retreat by the Scots. In nearly 400 years of occupation the Romans changed Britain forever
00:51by bringing their armies, ideas, buildings and religion. But the Romans couldn't have done
00:58any of it without one thing, their roads.
01:10Each Roman road tells a different story and this one is about the end of Roman occupation in Britain.
01:16This time I'm on Stain Street which runs from London all the way down to the south coast.
01:23This is a road that'll take me from the dizzy heights of wealth in Roman Britain to the depths
01:28of its last days. The Roman Empire stretched across Europe and they defended it fiercely at every corner
01:36but by the fourth century they had mounting problems. They'd occupied our land for more than 300 years
01:43but they were being increasingly attacked by forces within Britain. While on the continent
01:49northern European tribes were threatening the Rhine border. The Roman Empire saw that area as a priority for defence
01:56and to reinforce it they withdrew troops from our land. In the end the very roads they'd built to help them rule Britain
02:03now became their escape routes.
02:05I want to explore what happened when the Romans evacuated Britain, leaving it to be overrun by Anglo-Saxon tribes
02:12from modern Germany and Denmark. I'm hoping that a trip along Stain Street will give me an insight into the Romans' legacy in Britain.
02:22Stain Street runs 67 miles from London to Chichester. The route is closely followed by our modern roads like the A3 and A24.
02:30This short straight road from capital city to coast passes through lands that we would now recognise
02:37as the home counties of Surrey and Sussex. At one point they were the wealthiest and most Romanised areas in Britain
02:45and now some of our most idyllic countryside. It's all a far cry from the transport hub at the top of this road.
02:52Stain Street begins in a city that was founded by the Romans as Londinium and which is Roman Britain's greatest legacy.
03:04It was a centrepiece of communication and it helped shape the face of modern Britain.
03:09This is the Barbican, so named after the Roman fort that stood here.
03:14London's fort was the home of the official guard of the governor of Britain
03:19and would have housed around a thousand men in a series of barrack blocks.
03:23It was built of Kentish ragstone, brought by boat along the Medway and Thames
03:28and included bands of red tiles.
03:30But by the 4th century, this fort was under increasing threat.
03:35Britain's Roman rulers were struggling to defend themselves
03:38against internal rebellion and from constant incursions by barbarian tribes.
03:46In 367 AD, Roman Britain fell victim to an event known as the Great Conspiracy.
03:51Bands of Scots and Picts and Saxons overran Hadrian's Wall and attacked positions on the east coast.
03:58Now, a general known as Theodosius was sent from the continent to deal with the problem
04:03and is telling that he came right here to Londinium.
04:06He probably did that because there was a very strong fort that he could use as a military base
04:11and you can still see the remains of the north-western walls of that fort right here.
04:18With roads pointing in every direction from London,
04:21this fort was the key to securing the rest of the country
04:24and in 367 AD, the Romans did just that.
04:29The Romans continued to fortify London's walls right up until the end of the 4th century.
04:34In fact, these were some of the last building projects undertaken
04:37before they abandoned Britain entirely at the beginning of the 5th century.
04:42So, in a sense, you can think of these walls as the Romans' architectural swan song.
04:49The Romans may have quashed the Great Conspiracy of 367 AD,
04:54but the next 50 years witnessed chaos across Europe
04:57as barbarian tribes like the Visigoths and Vandals rebelled against the empire.
05:03Because of its strategic location on the River Thames,
05:06the Romans protected London.
05:08By river and road, it was their escape route back to mainland Europe.
05:14Using the quickest means of communication,
05:16it was actually possible to get a message from here in London
05:19all the way to the city of Rome in just nine days.
05:24Now, towards the end of the Roman Empire,
05:26when Britain was increasingly under attack,
05:29it became really important to get messages to the continent
05:32as quickly as possible.
05:37With its straight route to the south coast,
05:40Stain Street was a vital link in that communication network.
05:43But where did it start?
05:45There's evidence near St Magnus the Martyr Church
05:48on the north side of London Bridge.
05:53If you're looking around London for signs of where Stain Street started,
05:57you won't have that much luck.
05:59But this piece of timber might just be a clue.
06:02This was found in the 1930s during excavations around the Thames,
06:07but it actually dates back to the 1st century AD,
06:10the time just after the Romans had arrived in Britain.
06:13Now, it was probably from a wharf,
06:17from a structure at the side of the river.
06:19And actually, where we're standing now,
06:21we're quite a long way back from the boundary of the modern Thames.
06:26And that really tells you just how much wider
06:29the River Thames was in Roman times.
06:33Now, as well as the river having changed shape over the years,
06:37London Bridge has moved around as well.
06:39The modern bridge is about 50 yards down in that direction.
06:43But it's quite probable that the old Roman bridge,
06:47the wooden structure, started somewhere around here,
06:51as did Stain Street.
06:52If I want to continue my journey along it,
06:54I've got to use what we now know as London Bridge.
07:00The original Roman bridge
07:03was probably a military-style pontoon bridge,
07:05and it was a vital link on the direct overland route
07:09from East Anglia to Britain's southern ports.
07:12People had been crossing the Thames using fords and causeways
07:15for thousands of years,
07:17but it was the Romans who were the first to have the technology
07:20to actually build a bridge
07:22to allow uninterrupted movement of people,
07:25animals and carts across the river.
07:27By the 2nd century AD,
07:30Londinium was a thriving city
07:32with a population of around 60,000.
07:35A good many of them would have been crossing the bridge
07:37and using Stain Street.
07:39Evidence for that huge thoroughfare in Roman times
07:42is still being unearthed today.
07:45I've come to meet mudlarkers,
07:47Ed and Monica.
07:47How are you doing?
07:49Are you all right?
07:50I'm done.
07:51How are you doing?
07:51Nice to meet you.
07:52So this is mudlarking.
07:53What's it all about?
07:54So mudlarking is basically picking up London's history.
07:58So the tidal range of the Thames is 6 to 7 metres,
08:03and every time it comes up and goes down,
08:05it brings up more objects.
08:08And for us, it's salvaging, finding London's treasures
08:12that would be washed away and lost forever.
08:14Now, I arrive and you've just found a piece of Roman greyware.
08:18Yep.
08:19Which is...
08:19It's a bit of cooking vessel.
08:20It's a tiny little shard.
08:21It doesn't show much, but we know it's Roman.
08:24How do you know it's Roman?
08:25It's very, very thin.
08:27It's grey all the way through.
08:29The profile?
08:30Profile as well.
08:31The shape of it, if you look at the side of the pot.
08:33That's probably a small dish, serving dish.
08:36How do you think this ended up there?
08:37Basically, some Roman kitchen maid probably dropped it.
08:41Dropped it.
08:41Broke it.
08:42That's it.
08:42In the trash, then another person comes and dumps it in the rubbish pile,
08:47which, unfortunately, is a tent.
08:49So, should we see what we can find?
08:51Yeah.
08:51Let's go.
08:54So, here, you've got a lot of demolition rubble from all ages.
08:58As you can see, there's a lot of flints.
08:59There's tiles.
09:02Oh, this is interesting.
09:03So, this is a little bit of Roman tegla roof tile.
09:07How do you know that's Roman and that's not?
09:09You can tell two ways by the texture, by the profile.
09:13So, this is the flange of a tegla tile, which would have been used on one of the Roman buildings in Londinium.
09:19Yeah.
09:19It's got the notch at the back, so this would have formed the bottom part of the tile and would have sat on a Roman roof.
09:27Medieval tiles tend to be a lot thinner.
09:30And, again, the fabric is different.
09:32So, that is Roman and it's still in situ from when it was dumped in the Thames.
09:36So, that's history in the making.
09:37That's amazing, just there amongst all of this.
09:40You've got the eye for it.
09:41It's very impressive.
09:42There we go.
09:42We found something.
09:43We have.
09:46Mud larkers like Ed and Monica have found thousands of objects on the Thames.
09:51Many of them tell us a lot more about Roman life near Stain Street than a simple roof tile can.
09:56So, this is an amazing array of stuff that you found on previous visits to the Thames.
10:02Tell me about some of it.
10:05Ceramics are very common on the Thames and obviously get washed in, got thrown in Roman times.
10:10This is a flagon neck and, as you can see, it's still got the neck and the handle and is astounding that it's survived in the river for nearly 1,800 years.
10:19So, how big do you think the original vessel would have been?
10:22The original vessel would have stood roughly about that high.
10:26So, as you can see, the profile is pretty good.
10:30And do we know what it would have contained?
10:32Probably wine.
10:33So, again, the Romans, as we know, were great drinkers.
10:36And obviously, it would have been a vessel that would have been used throughout Londonium.
10:42And what is this?
10:43Is this a little lamp or is it a little tiny teapot?
10:46It's a little Roman oil lamp.
10:48It's probably first century.
10:50The style of it is particularly small.
10:52So, it's an early copy of the Roman ones.
10:54It was made in London itself, probably by an Anglo-Roman factory.
10:58It's absolutely beautiful, practically complete.
11:02It would hold enough oil to basically burn for two to three hours.
11:05So, that would just be able to have your little servant going around, light of the morning, the evening, and it would take you through to bedtime.
11:10When London was abandoned by the Romans in the 5th century, the skills and the money to maintain the bridge were lost.
11:21It fell into disrepair and collapsed.
11:23The techniques to rebuild it didn't re-emerge for at least another four to five hundred years.
11:29The bridge seems to have been rebuilt by the year 984 AD.
11:34Beyond London Bridge, Stain Street heads due south, passing Borough Market and Elephant and Castle towards Clapham.
11:41I'm now about two miles from London Bridge in South London, and this is an absolutely classic example of how the Roman road network is still with us, just buried beneath modern roads and modern architecture.
11:54This is Clapham Road, the modern A3.
11:57And as you can see, it's wide, it's level, it's absolutely arrow straight.
12:02And we've got the Romans to thank for this, because this is Stain Street, and about 60 miles in that direction is the city of Chichester.
12:10That's where I'm going.
12:14As I leave London, Stain Street takes me into the Surrey Hills, where I'll investigate something the Romans left behind, but which is still as popular today as it was nearly 2,000 years ago.
12:32I'm travelling the length of Stain Street, the Roman road from London to Chichester, to find out what happened when the Romans abandoned Britain, and the legacy they left behind.
12:4625 miles south of the capital, the road follows the route of what is now the A3 and A24.
12:53The journey brings me close to the Surrey Hills and the town of Dorking.
12:57The Romans may be long gone, but today Box Hill is still inhabited by examples of the wildlife they brought here.
13:05The largest land snails in Britain were introduced by the Romans, who wanted to eat them.
13:10Their shells thrive off the calcium in the chalk around this area, and they're a protected species in England.
13:17And snails weren't the only delicacy the Romans brought.
13:20One of the goods the Romans imported to Britain in massive quantities was wine.
13:27And here today, just off Stain Street in the Surrey Hills, is somewhere where the legacy of Roman drinking habits still lives on.
13:35This landscape, near where Stain Street crosses the River Mole, has been sculpted by the tradition of Roman viticulture,
13:42something we've all become rather fond of in the last 2,000 years.
13:47I'm meeting wine expert Paula Locke to find out more.
13:50How are you doing?
13:51Good, thank you.
13:52Nice to see you.
13:53So, Paula, the Romans were very famous for drinking wine.
13:56Did everyone drink wine, or was it just for posh people?
13:58Everyone drank wine.
14:00So, from emperor to slave, and even the Roman soldiers had wine as a ration.
14:04Wine was really the drink that all of the Romans drank, mainly because the water wasn't always very good.
14:10So, wine was a lot safer.
14:12So, the alcohol helped to purify the water?
14:14Exactly.
14:16While most wine was imported from the continent, there's evidence the Romans produced it in our relatively chilly climate.
14:24They had a vineyard as far north as Northampton.
14:27Grapes were pressed, and the juice boiled or baked to preserve it.
14:31As a sweetener, the Romans added honey, and sometimes lead.
14:36Well, all this talk of wine is making me thirsty, and we've got several bottles in front of us.
14:41What have we got all together?
14:42OK, this one is called conditum, and this is a spiced wine.
14:46And so, was that saffron?
14:48Yeah, you've got some saffron, some black pepper.
14:51I thought that might be sort of dirt, but actually...
14:54No, it's pepper.
14:54No, it's pepper.
14:56Yeah, and it also had infused with a bay leaf and a date stone.
15:00And was that a typical Roman recipe?
15:02Yes, I mean, all of these were fairly typical, what I've done for you today.
15:06Can I try some?
15:06Please do.
15:09Oh, that's really sweet.
15:10Really sweet.
15:15Ooh!
15:17Quite lemony.
15:18Quite tasty, though, isn't it?
15:19It is tasty, yeah, but you would have typically watered this down, right?
15:22Absolutely, yeah.
15:23And were there particularly popular spice combinations in conditum?
15:29Well, what I've done here is the classic, that we do actually have original recipes for that.
15:34And this particular drink was so popular, there was even a traveller's version.
15:37So if you were particularly picky about your mixture, you could mix up the spice element and the honey and take it along with you.
15:44And as you stopped off at an inn, you would just pour in your own spices.
15:47Love it.
15:48Winemaking goes back thousands of years, but it was the ancient Greeks who refined the art.
15:54As Rome expanded and took over Greek settlements in southern Italy in the 3rd century BC,
15:59they adopted their winemaking traditions, as well as Dionysus, the god of wine, who the Romans called Bacchus.
16:06OK, so what about this one, Rosata?
16:08Well, amazingly enough, it's roses.
16:12So, basically, you go and collect loads of rose petals from your garden and then sew them up into a linen bag
16:17and then you fuse it into the white wine.
16:20And my daughters make perfume by doing that, so similar principle?
16:23Do they just like the flavour of roses?
16:25Yes, yeah.
16:27OK, well, let's see.
16:27Is that... looks like a rose petal floating in it.
16:31Wow, it smells really perfumed.
16:36Wow.
16:38It's very nice, but that...
16:40It's like drinking liquid roses.
16:42Very sweet, again.
16:44Wine was a precious commodity and needed careful transport and storage.
16:49Both the Romans and the Greeks used large ceramic jars called amphoride to hold their wine.
16:55Each holds the equivalent of around 35 bottles.
16:59And, finally, what do we have?
17:02So, this is the passam.
17:03I'm not going to tell you what that's called in English.
17:05I'm going to actually see if you can work it out.
17:08OK.
17:13Smells almost like apples or pears.
17:18Getting close.
17:20Whoa, that is really sweet as well.
17:22What is it?
17:23It's actually raisin wine.
17:25Raisin wine?
17:26Yeah.
17:26So, it's semi-dried grapes they used and then immerse into the wine and they pulp up and then, actually, you swizz the wine about and the raisin juice goes into the wine.
17:36So, what are the main differences between wine in Roman times and wine today?
17:40Basically, because the Romans watered down their wine.
17:43So, it was one part wine to three parts water and it was always diluted.
17:48Otherwise, it was considered uncivilised to drink it neat.
17:52What did the Romans think about getting drunk?
17:53Well, it was a definite no-no.
17:56The elite were very snooty about drunkenness, although it seems they probably did also overindulge sometimes.
18:03Bars in Pompeii, for example, there's over 150 bars just in that small city.
18:07And they were always described as being quite riotous and drunkenness, brawls, that kind of thing.
18:14Women were supposedly not meant to drink either, or at least definitely not in excess, although they obviously did because wine was the drink.
18:22So, it was the usual standards, really, you know, men, okay, women, no, not allowed to.
18:27So, sort of timeless, hypocritical attitudes towards drinking going on in Roman times as well.
18:30Nothing changes, does it?
18:32Well, thank you very much.
18:33You're welcome.
18:37Winemaking in Britain continued after the Romans departed, at least into the time of the Normans.
18:42More than 40 vineyards in England are mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086.
18:48And so it's back on the Roman roads south.
18:51This is the A29, or, as it's known locally, Stain Street.
18:56Now, in the fields around here, there was once an old posting station known as Alfoldian,
19:02where travellers could change horses and rest before heading on down another 14 miles to another posting station known as Hardham.
19:11And that's where I'm headed now.
19:13The major roads in Roman Britain had stopping places at regular intervals, usually every 20 miles.
19:24These were often small garrisons called wayforts.
19:27But if there were no soldiers in town, civilian buildings called posting stations served a similar purpose,
19:33a means of carrying messages quickly across the empire.
19:36My next stopping point on Stain Street is the spot where it crosses the River Arran in West Sussex.
19:43This village of Hardham was once the last staging post on Stain Street before you got to Chichester.
19:52So any messengers bringing urgent news down from London would have had to stop here.
19:58Now, today, there's nothing left in the way of Roman buildings.
20:01But inside this little medieval church dedicated to St. Botolph,
20:06there are a few tantalising glimpses that remain into the Roman world.
20:20Wow.
20:22This ancient church contains some of the oldest wall paintings in Britain.
20:27It's like a medieval art gallery.
20:28The Reverend Peter Mallinson is vicar here.
20:33Hi, Peter.
20:34How are you?
20:34Nice.
20:36So, Peter, this is a lovely church, but it's not Roman, is it?
20:39No, it's Saxon.
20:41Two-cell Saxon church, round about 1013 to 1050 built.
20:46What's this Roman connection?
20:48Round here there was a wayfort on Stain Street, which was destroyed round about that time,
20:54and this is actually built out of the rubble from the wayforts.
20:59After the Romans left, their structures fell into disuse.
21:03It was common for the locals to cannibalise the stone.
21:07Masonry from the mighty Hadrian's Wall was used to build Hexham Abbey in Northumberland.
21:11Apart from showing me his church, built of Roman masonry, there's one fresco in particular Peter wants me to see.
21:20There's another Roman connection, isn't there, because we have St George on the wall.
21:23We do have St George on the wall.
21:25This was originally St George's church, they believe, not St Bottos, and he was the patron saint of it.
21:32So the pictures here are very much dedicated to the life and work of St George.
21:37According to some theories, England's patron saint was a member of an elite army unit, the Praetorian Guard, whose members were personal bodyguards for Roman emperors.
21:48He was beheaded due to his Christian beliefs and made a martyr.
21:52Here we have not only a building that's made from Roman materials, but on its walls we also have a kind of recycled Roman built into a medieval saint.
22:05Because here he is, I mean, what context do we see him on the frescoes?
22:08We see him fighting with his staff, they're called pikes, don't they, drawn and fighting.
22:16I'm not sure if he's fighting the dragons or fighting the infidel, as was said at that time.
22:21And people still tell that story of St George, even though they might not know the details of who he was, where he came from.
22:29But they have that attachment to St George.
22:30They have that attachment to St George, which is understandable.
22:32But I always thought, he's probably not an Englishman.
22:38Eventually, Christianity became the official Roman faith.
22:42George was canonised by Pope Gelasius I and became England's patron saint in the 1340s.
22:51What do these pictures of St George tell us? Are they telling us a story?
22:54You have St George fighting the dragon.
22:57Then you have St George being tortured by his torturers.
23:01And that one, at the far end, you can see the brick arch.
23:05That's actually St George into his tomb.
23:08It tells a whole sequence of events of the life of St George.
23:11And so in a way, this building is designed to be read.
23:14It's exactly the same as stained glass.
23:15They're stories you told because you didn't read and write.
23:19The priest told the stories from the Bible on a Sunday.
23:22But actually, the walls of the building tell the story far more eloquently than any priest ever could.
23:28So for all of these generations and centuries of ordinary people who weren't taught to read and write,
23:33they'd still know these martyrdom stories and these stories that came from Roman Britain.
23:38Oh yes, because here they are.
23:41As Stain Street continues further into West Sussex, it reveals a fascinating archaeological find.
23:47Its preservation came about largely thanks to the Romans' hasty exit from Britain.
24:01The Romans ruled Britain for nearly 400 years.
24:06But in the early 5th century, they withdrew to defend other parts of their empire,
24:10as barbarian tribes ran amok in northern Europe.
24:14Britain was soon invaded by the Saxons, who came from territories we now know as northern Germany.
24:20My journey along Stain Street has plenty to reveal about the last years of our Roman occupation.
24:27I'm well into the last quarter of the journey, at least 60 miles from London and not far from Chichester.
24:34For three centuries, the south of Britain, which Stain Street cuts through,
24:38was the province's richest and most Romanised region.
24:41Here, among the fertile agricultural lands of what's now Sussex,
24:47prosperous landowners built luxurious, sprawling villas to show off their wealth.
24:52Just off Stain Street lies Bignor Villa, discovered by a farmer in 1811 when his plough hit a large stone.
25:03Opened to the public for the first time in 1814, the site was one of Britain's earliest tourist attractions.
25:10It has stayed in the ownership of the same family, the Tuppers, to this day.
25:14I'm meeting Dr Miles Russell, an archaeologist who has examined the findings made at Bignor.
25:21So, Miles, where was Stain Street?
25:22So, Stain Street's just running in front of us here.
25:25It goes down just in front of the Downs and then goes up as a zigzag path up to the top of the chalk.
25:30So this is a pretty good place to put a villa?
25:32Oh, it's absolutely ideal, yes.
25:34And then access, I suppose, to Chichester over there and London over there?
25:37Yep, exactly, down to the main markets, up to London and the harbours beyond.
25:41A pretty nice spot. Shall we go and have a look?
25:42Let's do that.
25:45Bignor Villa has some of the finest mosaics in Britain,
25:48and the longest continuously exposed one in Europe, at 24 metres.
25:55So, Miles, we're standing before this amazing mosaic. What was it once part of?
25:59This is part of the north wing of the villa, so this is the main domestic range.
26:04This is where we're going to get the dining room, the entertainment space,
26:08and also the main business part of the villa.
26:10So where everything's going on in the villa, it's in this part of it.
26:15The owners left with the rest of the Romans.
26:17It seems their haste may have been the cause of the villa's preservation.
26:21This sort of quality of mosaic is relatively rare survival-wise.
26:25We're fortunate that this particular site was discovered in 1811,
26:28at a time before there was deep ploughing or intensive agricultural activity across the South Downs.
26:33So the preservation here is really thanks to the fact it hadn't been disturbed by ploughing.
26:38It also, as far as we can see at the end of the Roman period, was abandoned relatively quickly.
26:43So it was forgotten about, and a number of villas were cannibalised,
26:47the material ripped out and used for other buildings.
26:49It's abandoned and it's laying quiet underneath the turf for thousands of years.
26:53What was this villa once like, and what sort of people built a villa like this?
26:58Do we know who built it?
26:59We don't know who built it, but we can say that right at the very end of Roman Britain,
27:03around about 340 AD, someone comes here with a vast amount of money,
27:08and they're spending it in an extremely lavish way.
27:11Where would you get that kind of money in late Roman Britain?
27:14I think whoever's coming here is coming from another part of the Empire,
27:18because I think when you look in a lot of areas of this part of the world,
27:23in Sussex and Hampshire, suddenly there's a huge influx of cash,
27:26and we're not really seeing it anywhere else in Southern Britain.
27:29I think it might actually be possibly from Gaul or from another part of the Western Empire.
27:34What would it have been like for ordinary Britons to see a place like this go up in their midst?
27:39I mean, would there have been any benefit for them?
27:42Britons might be working here on the farm as labourers,
27:45they might be perhaps participating in some kind of trade here,
27:49but they're not living in this house, they're not benefiting from it,
27:52they're not really becoming Roman.
27:54Let's talk about the detail of some of these mosaics.
27:57We can see all these geometric designs here,
27:59but there are figurative designs elsewhere in the villa.
28:02Yes, there are.
28:03I think the thing is about being a Roman here, it's all about showing off,
28:06showing your wealth, but also showing how integrated you are into Roman society,
28:11so you're showing scenes from Roman mythology.
28:14So we've got a fantastic mosaic over there that shows a scene of Jupiter
28:18in the guise of an eagle abducting Ganymede the shepherd boy for his own nefarious purposes.
28:23And then you've got a series of dancing girls around the outside and an ornamental fountain.
28:30The Romans didn't invent mosaics,
28:32they took the idea from the Greeks and expanded on it.
28:35But the designs are often geometric,
28:38but from the 1st century AD they became more sophisticated.
28:42They often show religious stories, scenes from myth and lots of animals,
28:46both real and legendary.
28:49When the Romans left Britain, what happened to this villa?
28:52I think the key thing to think about this villa is its big lifespan.
28:56The luxury that we can see here is very short-lived.
28:58So at 340 AD, these floors are being laid.
29:01By 380, it's gone.
29:03So it's got a lifespan of about 40 years.
29:05I think it's coming at just the point where the economy is starting to collapse,
29:10where you've got rebellion, where you've got invasion,
29:13and you just don't have the kind of finances to sustain this kind of luxury living.
29:18And the countryside is also becoming increasingly an unsafe place to live.
29:21You're sort of sitting there, look at me, I'm rich.
29:23So I think this villa, the roof collapses onto the floor.
29:28We've got areas where large roof tiles have come down and gone straight through the floor.
29:33It's been abandoned.
29:34It hasn't been used, the stonework hasn't been ripped up and cannibalised.
29:37So I think it's just abandoned fairly swiftly and forgotten.
29:41Why was this particular part of the province so vulnerable to attacks?
29:44If we talk about the Saxons migrating down through the English Channel,
29:49they're a bit like the Vikings in a much later period.
29:51It's nighttime attacks, sudden attacks on very wealthy targets,
29:55getting loot, getting prisoners and out.
29:57So all the coastal villas are burning down.
29:59This one's a bit protected because it's the other side of the downs,
30:03but increasingly it's an obvious target and there's no defences here.
30:07So this villa is coming into its wealth and status at just the wrong time
30:11at a point where it's becoming very, very dangerous to be a rich person
30:15in this part of the territory.
30:17So when this part of the world became vulnerable, where did people typically go?
30:23If you've got ties here, family here and want to stay,
30:25then you need to be somewhere more secure.
30:27And that might be inside a town.
30:29It might be moving further westwards where you've got less invasion,
30:33less rebellion going on.
30:35Or you might eventually decide to cross the Channel and just go.
30:39But you're taking your wealth and status with you.
30:41But certainly after the Roman administration breaks down,
30:44actually the way of life is improving.
30:46Standards of life gets better and life expectancy improves.
30:49So ironically, I guess when we think about the end of Roman Britain,
30:53life for the Britons improves once Rome has gone.
30:59With the Romans gone, native Britons no longer had to pay tax to the empire.
31:04So they were probably able to buy better food.
31:07And some historians think this would have added a few years to their life expectancy.
31:12Male Britons might have lived to be 44 and women 35.
31:17From Bignor, Stain Street climbs the escarpment of the South Downs,
31:22continuing as an agar, an ancient Roman embankment,
31:26across the steep hillside.
31:27Most people think that the Romans' most visible legacy in Britain today
31:32is their arrow-straight roads, just like this section of Stain Street.
31:37But do the Romans deserve all the credit?
31:40I'm meeting Dr Steve Willis from the University of Kent,
31:44who's an expert on the ancient Celts.
31:47Steve, the Romans get all the credit for the roads we see all across Britain,
31:51even today.
31:51But do they deserve it?
31:54They deserve it to a considerable degree.
31:57They had an imperial project to roll out their imperial policy across Britain.
32:04They needed to get their army, where they needed to be fast.
32:07They needed to move economic goods around.
32:10So many of those roads are straight.
32:13But then, in the Iron Age, many of these centres existed before the Romans,
32:20and they would have followed the natural grain of the land.
32:24Now, in many instances, that's what the Romans do too,
32:28and a lot of that is formalised in the Roman period.
32:32So is it more the case, then, that the Romans brought the hard engineering
32:35rather than the routes themselves?
32:37They bring hard resources, robust resources, for road-metalling surfacing
32:44with flagstones, gravel, all these layers that go to make up a road like this.
32:51In the Roman period, we see straight lines all over the landscape.
32:56But why did the Romans build so straight?
32:59We've got to remember that the Romans had an imperial policy.
33:03They tended to overbuild things.
33:05It was part of their mindset, and they were stuck with it.
33:09It's also about economy,
33:12because if you're moving things and people on roads,
33:17it's about 20 times more expensive than moving them by water.
33:21By the time you've loaded up your cart and you've got your oxen and your horses,
33:26you want to make that journey as swiftly as possible,
33:29because the profit you'll make will be going down,
33:31because you've got to feed your animals, you've got to rest them,
33:34you've got to water them, you might have to stay overnight.
33:36So the quicker you can make this journey with your heavy resources from A to B,
33:41the better it will be.
33:43Stain Street, which we're on today,
33:45there isn't much in the way of any signs of there being prehistoric or Iron Age activity below.
33:50So it seems to be a new road linking Chichester with a new foundation at London
33:54and crossing the wild woodlands of Sussex and Surrey.
34:01So typically for the Romans, they seem to have taken what was already there,
34:06improved it and Romanised it.
34:08In this case, the ancient routes that crisscrossed Britain.
34:12This two kilometre stretch of Stain Street passes through Earthham Woods,
34:17part of the Slindon and Earthham Estates.
34:19This section is also known as Monarch's Way,
34:22as it was part of the route that the future King Charles II used
34:26when he fled England for his life after the Battle of Worcester in 1651.
34:32From here, you can actually see the spire of Chichester Cathedral.
34:35Now, in Roman times, Chichester was an important fort,
34:38an industrial town called Noviu Magus Reginorum.
34:41And Stain Street makes a beeline straight for it.
34:45So I'm going to follow suit.
34:46Noviu Magus Reginorum was first established as a winter fort in 43 AD,
34:53not long after the initial Roman invasion of Britain.
34:56The town first rose to prominence due to its natural harbour,
34:59which still exists two miles to the southwest,
35:02though it was much closer in Roman times.
35:05After a journey of around 60 miles from London Bridge,
35:09travellers along Stain Street would eventually arrive in Chichester,
35:12here on the East Gate.
35:16It's 1800 years since the walls and gates were first built.
35:21Today they make up the most intact circuit of Roman town defences in southern England.
35:26More than 80% of the original structure has withstood the test of time.
35:31The original Roman wall was two metres thick and had a deep ditch.
35:35It was modified in the Middle Ages and again in the Georgian era.
35:38Its sheer size demonstrates not only the wealth of the region,
35:43but perhaps also the Romans' anxiety about invasion.
35:46This stone was carved during the first century of Roman occupation of Britain.
35:55It harks back to a time when a native British king called Cogedubnus
36:00dedicated a temple to the Roman gods Neptune and Minerva.
36:05And that's really important because it tells us something crucial
36:08about the way the Romans occupied Sussex and the rest of Britain.
36:13It wasn't just about violent conquest.
36:15Alliances with native rulers like Cogedubnus were just as important.
36:20In fact, without those alliances, you could say that none of the settlements
36:23that thrived up and down Stain Street
36:26would have survived anywhere near as long as they did.
36:29Chichester's amphitheatre and baths suggest a thriving Roman city.
36:36But by the 4th century, Roman archaeological finds start to dry up.
36:40And there's a reason for this.
36:43By the 360s, Chichester already needed its defensive walls.
36:47Roman Britain was under regular attack from bands of Saxons, Picts and Scots.
36:52With hindsight, this was the beginning of the end,
36:55although it was an end that took a long time to arrive.
36:5967 miles from its start in London,
37:03Stain Street reaches its end in Chichester.
37:06But before my journey finishes,
37:08I'll travel a few miles further into Hampshire
37:10to find out how, in the dying days of the Empire,
37:14the Romans made their final attempts to defend Britain from barbarian invaders.
37:18My journey along Stain Street has taken me on a truly historic route.
37:32From the heart of the capital, I've crossed London Bridge,
37:36traversed the agricultural lands farmed by wealthy Romans and Britons,
37:40and seen the city walls and east gate of Chichester.
37:42But my mission to find out how and why the Romans abandoned our islands isn't over yet.
37:50Just a few miles further west of Stain Street on the south coast lies a spectacular fortress.
37:56I'm at one of the last great building projects in Roman Britain.
38:00It's not a luxurious palace or a villa, but a defensive fort.
38:04Once maybe known as Portus Aderni, today it's Portchester Castle.
38:08It was built with the latest military technology,
38:11and today it's the best preserved Roman fort, north of the Alps.
38:15Portchester Castle was one of the series of coastal defences now known as the Forts of the Saxon Shore,
38:22stretching around the south and east coasts.
38:25The forts were built over the course of the 3rd century,
38:28to meet the threat presented by Saxon pirates,
38:31who were raiding the south coast of Roman Britain.
38:34This chain of nine great defences stretched from present-day Brancaster in Norfolk
38:39to Richborough on the Thames estuary,
38:41and from Dover in Kent right round to Portchester.
38:44This is where I'm meeting historian Paul Pattinson
38:48to learn about their fascinating history.
38:53We look around here, and although people will immediately focus on a medieval castle,
38:58you don't have to look very far to see Roman walls.
39:01There is this sense that we are living on top of Roman Britain, right?
39:05I think that's absolutely right.
39:07Most of our major towns and cities, a huge part of our road network,
39:12it's all from the Roman period.
39:14So you could argue that the topography that we have inherited is Roman in origin.
39:21Why did the Romans choose to put a fortification right here?
39:24I think it's to do with the way that materials are moving in and out of the province
39:29to serve the Roman army.
39:32So, for instance, they need a lot of grain.
39:34Britain is known as a big grain store for the Roman army.
39:37They're exporting a lot of minerals that are coming from the West Country, for instance.
39:41And so I think all of these shore forts that are built in the 3rd and 4th century are to do with that.
39:48Let's talk about the fabric of the building.
39:49How do we know that this was originally Roman?
39:52We know it's Roman from the things that are found here.
39:55And it also follows a conventional pattern for Roman forts being built at that time.
40:00But also there are some documentary references from Roman writers in the 4th and 5th centuries
40:06that mention several places along the British coast.
40:11Porchester could be one of them.
40:13Do we have any idea of how many people were here, what kind of people were here?
40:17From the character of the finds that came from the excavations, it's not purely military.
40:22The finds were of a character which suggests that families were here.
40:25So there were women and children here.
40:27So there are mercantile things going on here.
40:29We know they're making things here.
40:31They're making things out of antler and bone.
40:33They're weaving.
40:34There's metalworking going on.
40:36So it's more of a little town, really, with a fortification around it.
40:41And presumably a garrison.
40:43So we get towards the second half of the 4th century and we see an increase in attacks on Roman Britain
40:50from people outside Roman Britain.
40:52What was happening?
40:53Well, the Great Conspiracy is a good point to start.
40:56367 AD, there's this massive, apparently, collaboration between a number of peoples on the fringes of the Roman Empire.
41:03Actually, a lot of them, as far as Britain's concerned, are from its northern and western regions.
41:10So we've got the Picts, the Caledones, the Scots, including some Irish raiders as well.
41:15On two occasions, we get major Roman generals, Theodosius, and then Stilicho, towards the very end of the 4th century,
41:23who have to bring armies across here to put things right.
41:26So what was the real moment of crisis for Roman Britain?
41:30It's a mounting crisis.
41:32Troops have successively withdrawn to try and save the rest of the Western Roman Empire.
41:38And the crunch actually comes in 406, when a number of tribes from across the Rhine,
41:45when the Rhine freezes over in a particularly severe winter, sweep into Gaul and they overrun Gaul.
41:50And from that moment on, Britain is effectively cut off from communications with the rest of the Empire.
41:55So you can say that by 411, Britain is no longer a Roman province.
42:00As the Romans were withdrawing from Britain, and specifically from around here,
42:04what do you think it must have been like for ordinary people?
42:07Well, you can imagine what it's like in a situation where society is breaking down,
42:13where you no longer have enough soldiers to protect you,
42:18where the civil administration is breaking down, where there's a shortage of money,
42:22and where ships might appear in the estuary.
42:25At any time, it could have been pretty terrifying, actually.
42:29And, you know, people probably did suffer, I would imagine.
42:33You know, but part of me also thinks that, you know, people do survive, don't they?
42:36And even raiders need people to farm and to make things.
42:41So, yes, there would have been some terrifying times, but, you know, people survived.
42:45Did they not?
42:46I suppose, in a way, no matter how sophisticated the Romans were compared to civilisations before them,
42:52I guess their great achievement was their engineering.
42:54What they did, for better or worse, really lasted and is still here with us today.
42:59That's it.
43:00I mean, it's the bones of the country, if you like.
43:03In 406 AD, the Roman Empire was itself invaded by Germanic tribes from the north.
43:10Troops from across the empire, including Britain, were called back to defend the homeland.
43:15By around 407 AD, the last contingents of the Roman army had left Britain.
43:21With no Roman administration to maintain order or soldiers to defend it,
43:26the Roman way of life fell under attack,
43:28both from the tribes within Britain and the Saxons arriving from northern Europe.
43:33Roman rule in Britain was over.
43:35Stain Street has taken me from the heights of Britain's Roman splendour
43:40to the chaos of the imperial retreat after nearly 400 years.
43:48And Stain Street is just one of the great Roman roads that I've travelled over these last few weeks,
43:55a journey across Britain of just under 1,000 miles.
43:59I've seen how the roads helped the Romans conquer Britain by carrying their armies,
44:03but then paved the way for the creation of towns and cities,
44:07the introduction of new religions and pastimes,
44:10the building of Roman Britain.
44:14And Rome's legacy lives on with us today,
44:17from these inspiring buildings to the culture
44:19and, of course, the incredible road network
44:22that has been my pleasure to walk along.
44:28Speaking of new religions and the stories of our past, keep on coming.
44:31Brand new at nine, Henry VIII's obsessive sign walk side,
44:35worn on his sleeve in bloodlust and the Boleyns.
44:38Before that, no moat nor portcullis can fend off a pandemic.
44:42It's been a very strange summer inside the Tower of London.
44:45Take a look next.
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