ROMANO-BRITISH
LONDON
Introduction: Burials and Roads
The rule has been, in other volumes of this series, to take the history of the county back far beyond the date when it received its present name, and to describe the condition and characteristics of the soil and population in prehistoric times. An exception is made in the present instance, partly on account of the circumscribed area under discussion. While most of our county names are about a thousand years old, that of London is clearly derived from Celtic sources,[2] and is little short of twice that age; so that the present chapter will trace the very beginnings of the City, with only a bare reference to the state of things existing before this isolated settlement of Britons was dignified with a name. There is, of course, nothing in the name itself to prove that it was not known centuries before the time of Caesar, but there are few indications of occupation before the influence of Rome was felt in this part of Europe.[3]
The physical features and geological history of primitive London, regarded as part of the Thames bank between the Lea and Brent valleys, is reserved for discussion under Middlesex; and of actual prehistoric finds in the City, Southwark, and Westminster there are indeed few to record. The river-bed itself abounds in antiquities of all periods, but the only rising ground fronting this part of its course does not seem to have attracted settlers in any numbers before the genius of Rome made it one of the chief junctions of a monumental road-system.
Palaeolithic implements found in the terrace-gravels or relics of the later Stone Age need not here detain us, but the discovery of Bronze-Age antiquities might be thought to carry back the history of a British community on the site some centuries before the Christian era. A celt of primitive type dating from the early Bronze Age was found near the Tower in 1834 and is now in the national collection with a palstave from the Minories. A number of bronze spear-heads in the same collection, partly fused together, were found in Thames Street in 1868, and are interesting on account of one specimen of a rare type[4] apparently confined to Britain. The above
1
- ↑ The first settlement of London, the importance of London in the early part of the Roman occupation, and the date of the Roman Wall are matters upon which divergent opinions are held. Two of the contributors to the following article on Romano-British London are not in complete agreement on these points, but as the evidence is conflicting it has been thought well to place the conclusions of both before the reader.—Editor V.C.H.
- ↑ Dr. Henry Bradley's views are given in Athenaeum, 7 Mar. 1908, p. 289.
- ↑ Arch. Journ. Ix, 181.
- ↑ As Evans, Bronze Implements, fig. 422.
