ROMANS AS SKATERS
DISCOVERY IN ENGLAND When the Romans conquered Britain their only sports were not chariot racing and gladiatorial displays. Skating and mountaineering, it is revealed, were also among their winter and summer sports. A well-preserved pair of Roman skates of the period about a.d. 200 and a 1,700-year-old alpenstock have been discovered by Mr C. J. Mogridge, warden of Winchester Museum. The skates were found in the peaty sub-soil some 16ft below the present level of the ground in the centre of Winchester, principal town of England for more years than London has been. The skates gre of bone, possibly the shin bone of a horse or an ox, flattened and polished on one side by contact with the ice, and roughly fashioned on the other side to fit a Roman sandal. Both skates are upturned at the toe. Holes bored -through the bone suggest that the skates were held
tightly by cords. Mr Mogridge found, nearby a knuckle bone' sharpened into a spike at the one end to form an alpenstock. In Roman times the River Itchen had either to be forded or in winter time skated over. Apparently some thoughtless Roman lost his skates on the river bank, and they have only now come to light.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Star, Issue 23562, 29 April 1940, Page 6
Word Count
210ROMANS AS SKATERS Evening Star, Issue 23562, 29 April 1940, Page 6
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