A ROMAN MOTOR ROAD.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 401, 4 October 1911, Page 3

A ROMAN MOTOR ROAD.

' The old Roman occupation of the country continues to exercise a practical as well as a romantic influence upon the Britain of the present day. The newest of the kingdom's institutions, the National Road Board, which was created last year by the Development and Road Improvement Act in order to use money raised by the petrol tax for improving roads for motor traffic, has decided to rehabilitate the Roman Fosse Way for the delectation of motorists. The Romans made a great road from Leicester to Lincoln, and the Saxons named it Fosse Way. Though most of the main roads have continued in use from the time of the Roman occupation until now, large portions ol : the Fosse Way have been deserted for hundreds of years. There are a few old farmhouses scattered along it at intervals, but the villages are built far away from it and in parts the old roadway has been hidden from view. The National Road Board has undertaken to re-open a length of about six miles, which was covered with such a dense growth of briars and thorns that the men who surveyed it recently were occupied for a "fortnight in the task. On each side of the road they found Roman ditches, thirty yards apart, which were filled with water and overgrown. The old road had long been given up to gipsy camps, but in the early times when the parishes and counties of England were taking shape it was still sufficiently in evidence to form a boundary line. The workmen who have been clearing the Fosse Way have found indications of earlier disturbances of the paved surface. A good deal of the paving evidently was dug up years ago. Probably any enterprising farmer who was building a cow shed simply visited the road and selected quantities of stone to form a flooring for his own building, leaving the tangled undergrowth to cover up the evidence of his depredations. Now a roadway fifteen feet wide is being constructed with the old paving stones and new material. Before long motorists will be speeding along the path which was fashioned bv industrious Romans nearly two thousand years ago.