ABSTRACT
The Romans who made their first reconnaissance to Britain in 55 b c had already established a road system from Italy to the Channel. As their conquest was completed, so the same pattern of regular posting stations, bridges, fords and river transport was extended here. Construction work started in southern England about a d 43 and was largely completed by the year 81. Roads extended from London throughout Britain to Devon in the south, across much of Wales and into East Anglia, reaching as far north as Carlisle and Corbridge on Hadrian’s Wall. Those that were constructed in Scotland between the 80s and 160s as far as the Antonine Wall, which ran from the Firth of Forth to the River Clyde, and then beyond it to Inchtuthil, were abandoned by the end of the second century and only used for occasional incursions thereafter. Along the main roads, many of which were to remain in use until Elizabethan times, were placed milestones commemorating the contemporary Emperor, showing distances and destinations. The miles were a little shorter than our present measurement, being based on a thousand strides of 5 feet taken by a runner, equivalent in total to about 1,660 English yards.
