Road Transport



Chester has always lain at the convergence of many roadways, both national and local, which have both reflected and reinforced its standing as a regional capital. Roman Chester was the focal point of Roman military roads in northwest Britain, several stretches of which are still in use. Crossings of rivers were also re-used over the centuries. In the Middle Ages political considerations made Chester an important staging post for north Wales and Ireland. The Gough map of c. 1360 depicted the London-Chester-Caernarfon and the Bristol-Chester roads, the latter one of the few non-London roads shown. The most important local roads were the saltways connecting Chester with Northwich, Middlewich, and Nantwich. The main roads were improved and in some cases realigned under turnpike Acts passed between 1743 and 1787. They generally became the trunk and major roads of the 20th century, the busier ones being replaced by motorways or dual carriageways from the 1970s.

"Roads" before Rome
Prior to the Roman conquest of Britain, pre-Roman Britons mostly used unpaved trackways for travel. In some parts of the country, these routes, many of which had prehistoric origins, followed elevated ridge lines across hills, e.g. South Downs Way. Although most routes were unpaved tracks, some British tribes had begun engineering roads during the first century BC. Archaeologists working at a quarry in Shropshire have found a metalled and cambered road dated to the first century BC – around 100 years before the Roman invasion. However the majority of Iron Age roads were probably simple beaten tracks. Nevertheless, people still had to get around. Comodities such as flint and metals, and in particular tin, copper and salt, only available in certain places, but needed in others, were traded over long distances. Studies of remains such as that of the Amesbury Archer, found near Stonehenge, show that he grew up in the Lake District or North Wales. Chester and it's immediate surroundings are at what may well be an important cross-roads between the copper-producing areas of North Wales and the salt-producing areas to the east of Cheshire. The connection is particularly well illustrated by the discovery at Beeston Castle or archaeological remains associated with both copper and salt.



Shortly before the Roman invasion the Cornovii lived principally in the modern English counties of Cheshire, Shropshire, north Staffordshire, north Herefordshire and eastern parts of the Welsh county of Powys. Their capital in pre-Roman times was probably a hill fort on The Wrekin. Ptolemy's 2nd century Geography names two of their towns: Deva Victrix (Chester), and Viroconium Cornoviorum (Wroxeter), which became their capital under Roman rule. Their territory was bordered by the Brigantes to the North, the Corieltauvi to the East, the Dobunni to the South, and the Deceangli, and Ordovices to the West. The tribe developed no known coinage, but their control of the south-Cheshire salt-making industry and parts of its distribution network probably gave them a fair degree of wealth, multiplied by trading and cattle breeding. However, their economy was mainly a pastoral one. Since the early Iron Age they had had a network of paved and semi-paved roads good enough to transport their famous chariots.

Bronze
The archeological period in which bronze was the hardest metal in widespread use is known as the Bronze Age - although some have suggested that the Bronze Age should begin with the use of copper as the first toolmaking metal. The beginning of the Bronze Age in India and western Eurasia is conventionally dated to the mid-4th millennium BC, and to the early 2nd millennium BC in China. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by producing bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Bronze itself is harder and more durable than other materials available at the time (such as stone and copper), allowing Bronze Age civilizations to gain a technological advantage. In the Bronze Age, two forms of bronze were commonly used: "classic bronze", about 10% tin, was used in casting; and "mild bronze", about 6% tin, was hammered from ingots to make sheets. Bladed weapons were mostly cast from classic bronze, while helmets and armor were hammered from mild bronze. The specific make-up of the alloy can be used to link artifacts to their mine source. Early tin was produced from rich alluvial deposits of Cassiterite, mainly found in West Cornwall, as well as St. Austell and Bodmin. Tin is not known to occur in useful mineral sources in Wales, although it occurs in trace levels (max 0.001%) in rocks near Snowdon.

There is no complete consensus as to the beginning of "Bronze Age Britain". Copper objects (daggers, axes) first appeared in Britain around 2,400BC and were associated with people arriving from continental Europe. The first mining of copper in the UK may have been at Ross Island, Killarney. Large-scale human activity on the Great Orme began around 4,000 years ago, during the Bronze Age, with the opening of several copper mines. The Great Orme is a peninsula made mostly of limestone and dolomite, formed during the Early Carboniferous part of the Earth's geological history. Most of the Great Orme's rocks are between 339 and 326 million years old. There are also rich seams of dolomite-hosted copper ore. The copper ore malachite was mined using stones and bone (antler) tools. It is estimated that up to 1,760 tonnes of copper was mined during the period. The mine was most productive in the period between 1700BC and 1400BC, after which most of the readily accessible copper had been extracted. The site was so productive that by 1600BC, there were no other copper mines left open in Britain because they could not compete with the Great Orme. Experts from the Univeristy of Liverpool now believe there was a bonanza, particularly from 1600-1400 BC, with artefacts (such as "Palstave Axes") found as far afield as Sweden, France and Germany - from Britanny to the Baltic. The mining operations at the Great Orme probably involved a full-time mining community of over 100. At the time it is thought the whole population of the whole UK numbered only in the hundreds of thousands. The wealth generated by the Great Orme mine may have been responsible for the creation of the Mold cape, a solid sheet-gold object dating from about 1900–1600 BC in the European Bronze Age. It was found at Mold in Flintshire, in 1833. The cape is considered to be one of the most spectacular examples of prehistoric sheet-gold working yet discovered. An estimated 200–300 amber beads, in rows, were on the cape originally, but only a single bead survives at the British Museum. However the presence of these amber beads further supports the view that the makers were engaged in long-distance trade. Amber is found in quantity at some places on the North Sea coast and in the Baltic.

Though bronze is generally harder than wrought iron, with Vickers hardness of 60–258 vs. 30–80, the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age after a serious disruption of the tin trade: the population migrations of around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean and from Britain, limiting supplies and raising prices. As the art of working in iron improved, iron became cheaper and improved in quality.

Salt and "Cheshire Very Coarse Pottery"
Rock salt was laid down in Cheshire some 220 million years ago, during the Triassic period. Seawater moved inland from an open sea, creating a chain of shallow salt marshes across what is today the Cheshire basin. As the marshes evaporated, deep deposits of rock salt were formed. Until the late 20th century the inland pre-Roman salt industry of North West England was almost completely invisible archaeologically. No production site had been excavated and there was no evidence for a specific type of pottery or other paraphenalia for salt-makinh known as "salt briquetage" from this period. The Cheshire Roman Salt industry was first identified by W T Watkin in the 1850s (Thompson 1965; Watkin 1886, 291-3), yet it was not until the mid-1980s that the existence of an Iron Age precursor was finally confirmed.

The type of pottery in question is known as Cheshire VCP which is an abbreviation for Very Coarse Pottery. It has also been found in North Wales and the northern and central Welsh Marches area and dates from approximately 500 BC to the middle of the first century AD. Salt production has been a way of life in Cheshire since the Iron Age and these vessels served as crude containers for the final drying and transportation of salt from brine spring sources to settlements in the area - many have been found at Poulton near Pulford. The distribution of salt suggests an extensive exchange network in the second half of the first millennium BC across North Wales, north west England and northern Midlands. The salt was used for preservation such as salting meat, for making cheese and preserving hides. The pots are handmade, generally orange in colour and fired at a low temperature. They are described as ‘coarse’ because within the clay there are pieces of quartz and rock. Unfortunately we don’t know exactly where the vessels were made but scientific analysis of the clays suggest they were manufactured in the Nantwich – Middlewich area. The small bases and flaring conical rims make them suitable as evaporation containers for drying out the salt. There are no soot or food deposits found on them as would be expected on cooking pots and jars – a shape suited to reducing evaporation during cooking and usually grey, black or brown in colour.

Sandstone Ridge - Conduit or Barrier?
Alternative theories have been put forward as to why there is a string of forts along the Sandstone Ridge. One group of theories believes that there was prehistoric commerce along a "ridgeway" which followed the high ground (rather like the Sandstone Trail) and that the forts provided safe trading and stopping places. Another cluster of theories asserts that the forts were there to defend the "choke points" around the north and south ends of the ridge and through the passes/gaps. Some of these explanations appear to assume that the whole string of forts was occupied at the same time and that may have not been the case. It has been suggested that the increasing use of iron led to social changes in prehistoric Britain: deposits of iron ore were located in different places to the tin and copper ore necessary to make bronze. As a result trading patterns shifted and the old elites lost their economic and social status: as power passed into the hands of a new group of people and this social unrest led to the construction of defensive sites. It has also been argued that the hillforts could have been military sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, sites built by invaders, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and consequent pressure on agriculture. Yet another theory is that the hill-forts first sprang-up as ritual enclosures in the stone-age (6000 years ago) but were re-purposed when bronze was introduced (and possibly, given thst burial customs changed there was probsbly also social change) or that they were fortified as the climate deteriorated during the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age (some 3000 years ago) - putting pressure on society. Some evidence supports the idea that many ‘hillforts’ were abandoned as society changed in the middle to late Iron Age (after 400 BC). Whether the hill-forts plsyed any part in the regulation of the transport of salt across the Sandstone Ridge is undecided, although they do appear to be arranged to do this: fragments of pottery vessels of a kind believed to have been used to transport salt have been found at some of them, but they could have been the property of users of salt rather than evidence of a through-trade.



Roman Roads
Beginning in 43 AD, the Romans quickly created a national road network. Engineers from the Roman Army - in most cases - surveyed and built them from scratch. Key locations, both strategic and administrative, were connected by the most direct routes possible. Main roads were gravel or paved, had bridges constructed in stone or wood, and manned waypoints where travellers or military units could stop and rest. The roads' impermeable design permitted travel in all seasons and weather.

The precise course of Roman Roads leading to Chester has been the subject of considerable debate. The routes which lead in the four principal directions are discussed below:

Watling Street:

 * "Higden, the Monk of Chester, though he describes the course of Watling Street with considerable fulness, does not say that it led to Chester. Horsley1 had been informed that Watling Street, or a branch of it, went by Newport and Whitchurch from Wall to Chester, and that it appeared in several places. It would seem, however, that the road struck northward from Watling Street at the boundary between the counties of Stafford and Shropshire, close to where Uxacona must have been. At one mile west of Eston-under‑Lizard the Newport road is followed by a parish boundary for •three-quarters of a mile from Watling Street, which is here a parish and county boundary, and three and a quarter miles further on the road bears the name of Pave Lane, and is marked on the new Ordnance map as a Roman road, leading through Chetwynd Aston to Newport, three miles north of which the modern road, pointing straight to Newport, is followed for a mile by parish boundaries. At Standford Bridge, over the river Meese, a road called the Long Ford is entered upon, which continues for eight miles by Hinstock to Bletchley, parish boundaries following it for most of the way. Beyond Bletchley the course is lost, but it seems to have gone through Whitchurch to Malpas, whence the modern road, followed for two miles by parish boundaries, runs on straight to Tilston. A mile further on is Stretton, where Horsley placed Bovium, and then there is no trace for five miles. The line is picked up at Aldford, where a paved causeway is said to be visible at the river Dee at low water. Between the Dee and Chester, Stukeley observed the remains of the Roman road. It runs straight for four miles to Chester through Eaton Park, where it is still to be traced, and along the Eccleston Road, where the pavement was broken through in 1884 for a considerable distance. The road appears to have crossed the Dee between Dee Bridge and Chester Castle, in the direction of Bridge Street." (Codrington, 1903)

Watling Street began as an ancient trackway first used by the Britons, mainly between the areas of modern Canterbury and St Albans using a natural ford near Westminster. The Romans later paved the route, which then connected the Kentish ports of Dubris (Dover), Rutupiae (Richborough), Lemanis (Lympne), and Regulbium (Reculver) to their bridge over the Thames at Londinium (London). The route continued northwest through Verulamium (St Albans) on its way to Viroconium (Wroxeter). The Romans considered the continuation on to Blatobulgium (Birrens) beyond Hadrian's Wall to be part of the same route. The modern name instead derives from the Old English Wæcelinga Stræt, from a time when "street" (Latin: via strata) referred to any paved road and had no particular association with urban thoroughfares. The Waeclingas ("people of Waecla") were a tribe in the St Albans area in the early medieval period with an early name of the city being "Waetlingacaester", which would translate into modern English as "Watlingchester".

The Roman road left the south gate of the fortress at Roman Chester and crossed the River Dee at approximately the same point as the Old Dee Bridge. It then runs south of same line as the present Eaton Road. At Heronbridge the Roman road runs slightly east of present road. The road appears to have changed direction slightly c.1.6 km south of the centre of Eccleston. Alignment continued through Eaton Hall Park, where it crosses the Dee to the north of Aldford Church, by a ford. South of the river it is marked by a track between two rows of old thorn trees up to the south side of the castle motte close to the church. The road appears as a terrace just south and independent of the motte's earthworks and then as a large agger running up to the churchyard. At the church a change of alignment is made to SSE, marked by a line of hedgerows with old oaks and with traces of the agger and then by a green lane continued by more hedgerows with clear remains of an agger 24ft wide and 1 ft high. This can be seen where Edgerley Lane crosses it (SJ43055675 - see map on left below). To the south the agger lies mainly to the east of the hedge. The hedgerow line continues nearly to the Farndon-Barton Road and a parish boundary follows it. The road then proceeds through Barton to Stretton, then after another turn to the SE, the course is taken up for 5 miles by the road through Tilston and Malpas. At Kidnall Hill the old road is sunken and rough. Just beyond Malpas the straight road ends.

..to Caernavon:

 * "From Deva Iter XI of Antonine goes by Varae and Conovium to Segontium. The road appears to have branches from the road leading to Chester from the south after it had crossed the river Dee near Aldford, thus avoiding the Saltney Marshes on the south and west of Chester. The course according to Mr. Shrubsole is along the present road by Poulton Hall, Pulford, and Dodleston to Hawarden, where a road branched to Bala. The pavement has been found in a few places, and at Hawarden the course can be traced for several hundred yards, passing near the castle, by the church, and through the p88 vicarage grounds. Mr. Shrubsole continues it by Kesterton to Greenfield and Flint, and thence to Caerwys, where he places Varae, 32 M.P. from Deva, and 29½ miles from Chester by the course followed. Camden, probably led by sound, placed Varae at Bodfari, where there are no traces of Roman occupation; and Gale altered the Itinerary distance to 22 M.P. to suit a direct course from Chester. Conovium is placed at Caerhun on the river Conway, where the site of a Roman camp could formerly be traced, and from which in 1846 a raised turf road was traced, by Bwlch-y‑Ddwyfarn, and along the hillside above Llydiart-y‑Mynydd towards Aber. This road is shown on the Ordnance map for four miles to Maes-y‑gaer near Aber, a large camp apparently not Roman. Traces of the road are lost on reaching the enclosed ground, and the name Henffordd (old road) near Aber seems to be the only indication of the course to Segontium, near the mouth of the river Seiont at Carnarvon, where the Roman station is plainly traceable." (Codrington, 1903)

..to Wilderspool:

 * "A Roman road is supposed to have left Chester by the north gate, now represented by "The Street" or "Back Street" from Hoole, in the direction of Helsby Hill; and to be traceable towards the ford at Bridge Trafford. It is continued on by Denham, Frodsham, and Preston-on‑the‑Hill, beyond which the present road carries on the line for three miles towards Wilderspool. p90 It would there have crossed the Mersey with Kind Street to Wigan and the north." (Codrington, 1903)



..to Manchester:

 * "The Roman road from Chester to Northwich and Manchester, called Watling Street, was on the line of the present road for four miles to Stamford Bridge, and then along a highway with a parish boundary for another mile, pointing straight to Edisbury Hill (460′‑550′) in Delamere Forest. After an interval of a mile, a road with a parish boundary along it for three-quarters of a mile east of Salter's Brook takes up the line. Mr. Robson traced the road through Delamere Forest before it was effaced by deforesting operations. At the west of the forest he describes the ridge as being more or less distinctly marked for half-a‑mile, nine or ten yards across, with a well-marked crown, and shallow ditches and traces of mounds beyond them on each side. There was a thickness of 18 inches of solid gravel. Traces appeared after a mile and a half in the same course. At Edisbury Hill there is a slight turn, and the line is taken by a lane, and where that joins the road to Delamere railway-station the Roman road was cut through two feet beneath the surface in laying the Vyrnwy water-main. It is visible on the east of the road, and in about a mile and a half the Northwich road rejoins it for a short distance, and the ridge is traceable onwards on the north of the road to Sandiway, from which onwards the present road seems to follow very nearly p91 the course of the Roman road on to Northwich, where remains have been found in several places." (Codrington, 1903)

The Romans exploited the reserves of salt in Cheshire. A settlement, Condate, was built during Roman times at the current location of Northwich. It is believed that the Romans built this settlement due to the strategic river crossing of the Weaver and the presence of the brine springs. The Romans used lead salt pans to extract the salt from the brine. Salt pans and first-century brine kilns have both been found around the Roman fort. Middlewich was named Salinae by the Romans on account of the salt deposits around it, as it was one of their major sites of salt production. During this time the Romans built a fort at Harbutts Field, to the north of the town and recent excavations to the south of the fort have found evidence of further Roman activity including a well and part of a preserved Roman road. Middlewich was a junction between seven major Roman roads, and it has been known as 'Medius Vicus' (the town at the junction of the roads) in the past - pssibly the origins of the modern name.

Medieval


Celia Fiennes worked up her notes of her trip to Chester into a travel memoir in 1702, which she never published, intending it for family reading. It provides a vivid portrait of a still largely unenclosed countryside with few and primitive roads, although signposts ("posts and hands pointing to each road with the names of the great towns or market towns that it leads to") were appearing. In the 1690's England and Wales had a population of about five million, and when the internal economy was still largely based on agricultural work and production, the British economy was already distinctive in the extent to which the proportion of the employed population primarily dependent on agriculture had declined.

To London
The Roman road to London left Chester by the south gate of the fortress, bridged the Dee, and recrossed the river at Aldford. A direct line took it to Wroxeter (Salop.) on Watling Street and thus to London. Watling Street was used as a boundary in the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum and it is often inferred that this made the road the SW boundary of the Danelaw. It is still the boundary of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, this may be a legacy of the treaty described above. In Cheshire the few lengths followed by modern roads include that between Handbridge and Eaton park. The Roman road was disused by the 14th century, when the London road went instead over Stamford Bridge to Nantwich, Woore (Salop.), and Stone (Staffs.), where it converged with the road from Carlisle and the North to become one of the main national thoroughfares. In 1676 and 1780 carts set out via Stamford Bridge but riders used an alternative 'horse road' through Christleton, crossing the Gowy further south at the bridge called Hockenhull Platts before rejoining the main road at Duddon heath.

To Wales
The ruined Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis lies near the confluence of the Eglwyseg and the Dee north of Llangollen, and was founded by Madog ap Gruffydd on 28th January 1201 as a colony of Strata Marcella near Welshpool. The now ruined abbey buildings are typical of many Cistercian foundations, lying in a secluded river valley surrounded by farmland. The Pillar of Eliseg, the base of a stone "cross" prominently sited in the Eglwyseg valley, was (according to its inscription) erected in the first half of the 9th century by Cyngen ap Cadell in honour of his great-grandfather Eliseg (who was probably known as Elisedd ap Gwylog). In 1696 the antiquarian Edward Lhuyd recorded the original inscription, before it had deteriorated to its now largely illegible state. The inscription traced the perhaps part legendary descent of the royal house of Powys from the early 5th-century king Gwrtheyrn ("Vortigern"), the late 4th century Macsen Wledig (Magnus Maximus), and a religious blessing from St Germanus of Auxerre, thus laying down political and territorial claims reaching back to the late Roman world - see the Dark Ages article on the Romano-British for more. According to tradition, Magnus married Elen Luyddog - "Elen of the Hosts", who is associated with the building of many "Roman Roads" in Wales (some of which are prehistoric trackways - such as the "Ffordd Gam Elin" which runs from the earthworks at Caer Bont further up the Dee to the cairn/circle on the summit of Cader Bronwen). Elen and Magnus Maximus turn up in a garbled form in the Nativity Play of the Chester Mystery Cycle. The pillar was knocked down during the Civil War and was re-erected in 1779 by Trevor Lloyd of Trevor Hall. At that time the area was carefully examined, thinking that it might be Eliseg's final resting place. The remains of a very tall man and a silver coin were supposedly found there but his identity remains a mystery. A witness said the skeleton's bones 'broke like gingerbread' when exhumed.

By the 14th century the North Welsh route followed the coast to Flint, Rhuddlan (Flints.), Conwy (Caern.), and Bangor (Caern.). In the later 16th century it took a long inland detour from Flint to Denbigh and back to the coast at Conwy. By the 1670s the road left Chester by the Dee Bridge and Hough Green, crossed Saltney heath to Bretton (Flints.) and proceeded thence through Hawarden across Halkyn mountain to Denbigh. From there it followed what in the 20th century were minor and mostly unclassified roads, heading north-west to Bettws-yn-Rhos (Denb.), and then west to the Conwy ferry and eventually Holyhead.

Turnpike
The London road was turnpiked from Staffordshire southwards by the 1720s, and from Chester to the Staffordshire border in 1743. The Cheshire portion came under a separate turnpike trust in 1755. The Acts of 1743 and 1755 prevented the trustees from building a tollgate anywhere between Nantwich and Chester, severely restricting the trust's income. As a result the condition of the road, which was heavily used, remained poor until an Act of 1769 empowered the trust to make further improvements. The road was disturnpiked in 1883.

Related Articles

 * Pulford: may have been an important trade center in prehistoric times;
 * Industrial Revolution: communications and industry;
 * Geology of Chester: influence on transport;

General

 * Cheshire Past: (1993) - a much missed annual publication, covered many of the subjects discussed above;

Prehistoric

 * Prehistoric Copper Mining on the Great Orme, Llandudno, Gwynedd;
 * "Bronze Age discovery reveals surprising extent of Britain's trade with Europe 3,600 years ago";
 * Salt Making in Cheshire. The Iron Age Background;
 * Chester Amphitheatre Project Blog: Recent Find: Iron Age pottery: Cheshire VCP;
 * The Later Bronze and Iron Ages in west Cheshire (c 1800 BC-AD c 60);
 * The Celtic World;
 * Beacons in the Landscape: The Hillforts of England and Wales;
 * The Origins of Cheshire;
 * New ideas on the exploitation of copper, tin, gold, and lead ores in Bronze Age Britain: The mining, smelting, and movement of metal;
 * Conwy SSSI: for minerals in North Wales;
 * Cornovii a Celtic people of Iron Age and Roman Britain;

Roman

 * Cheshire's Roman Road Web Pages;
 * Chester Roman Roads;
 * Roman Roads in Britain: by Thomas Codrington;
 * Brine in Britannia: Recent Archaeological Work on the Roman Salt Industry in Cheshire;