ABSTRACT
Since the account of the Cripplegate fort was written the Viatores in Roman Roads in the South-east Midlands (pp. 185 ff., with maps on pp. 389-92,475) have produced suggestions for a system of roads linked with the west and north gates of the fort. From the former they show a road running north westwards by way of the modern King’s Cross station area to Hampstead and beyond (their road no. 167); from the latter road no. 220 is represented as running more or less due north by way of Canonbury and Southgate.1 It must be said at once that whatever the antiquity of these routes over
their more northerly courses there is no real evidence for their existence in the long built-up areas that enclose the city itself. The lines proposed cut arbitrarily across streets many of which are represented in maps of London from the sixteenth century onwards. Where the conjectured course and existing streets coincide the coincidence appears to be nothing more than accidental. It would seem to be in the highest degree unlikely that had these roads
existed they would have disappeared as completely as they have. The con tinuing importance of the other gates of London is reflected in the relation ship of trunk roads to them. Having been created by the Romans they have continued to the present day with such modifications as time has rendered inevitable. That such continuity could apply to matters of detail is well shown by a comparison of the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century panoramic maps, Hogenberg, ‘Agas’ and the rest,2 with modern maps: nowhere is this more marked than in the districts of Clerkenwell and Farringdon through which the proposed roads would have passed.
