Roman Roads

The Romans invaded Britain in about 54BC, for the first time they brought uptodate technology to Britain which being pearched off the west of Europe was one of the last places new inventions reached. The Romans built new cities and towns across England and Wales to communicate between these population centres and to speed up the movements of there armies they built new roads. Roman roads where so well built that many are still around or can be easily identified today.

Make up of Roman Road

A ditch about 3 ft (1 metre) deep was excavated. This was filled with large stones that were packed as compactly as possible to avoid movement and so lessen the risk of the road sinking.Over this a layer of smaller stones was laid and this was bound by cement that just covered the stones.The final layer was made up of gravel, or small pieces of flint that was compressed as tightly as possible.

Roman Roads that Became the A6

A map of the roman roads of Britain. Shows a road leaving Carlisle in a south easterly direction, going through Penrith then following the pennine hills to Ribchester just east of Preston, then on to Manchester and Buxton, a road leave Buxton to the south, but stops a little way from Derby. A road leaves Derby going South west past Burton on Trent to join Watling Street, Another road leaves Leicester to join Watling Street at High Cross.Watling Street itself leaves High Cross passing Milton Keynes, Dunstable and St Albans before reaching London. In fact apart from a gap from just north of Derby to Leicester it was possible to follow the a similar route to that of the A6 all the way from Carlisle to London. However several major places on the A6 where bypassed by these roads they include:- Kendal, Lancaster, Preston, Matlock, Loughborough, Kettering and Bedford. Do the fact bear this out, where these Roman roads the predecessor of the A6 or was there a Roman Road closer to today's route? In this section we will try to find out, we start this section with the city of Carlisle.